Violence in the Library - ArdentAspen2 - Star Wars (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

The control room is quiet, a welcome respite from the screaming of the wind in the shaft behind him. But the quiet doesn’t sit well, it feels false and expectant. His own footsteps echo too loudly across the floor panels, heightening his unease. The Force is resonating, a warning and a promise and something almost familiar all at once, but he’s not sure why--

There is a musical hum and a shrill warning in the Force and he barely has time to raise his blade. How does a man that big just disappear so easily? Darth Vader bears down on him, forcing him to retreat back outside onto the gantry, and it is now more evident than ever that this was never a duel, or even a fair fight. The dark lord has been toying with him, testing him, and it seems he is beginning to run out of patience.

One particularly vicious swing knocks him flat, metal stairs digging into his back, strained muscles screaming. Now there is a lightsaber inches from his face and he knows he’s about to die.

“You are beaten,” Darth Vader says, stern and measured, “It is useless to resist! Don’t let yourself be destroyed as Obi-wan did!”

But that is the wrong thing to say. Now that he is reminded of Obi-wan, of his father’s old friend, his mentor, determination rises in him. He refuses to die here, like this. At the very least, he’s going to be on his feet. With a sudden burst of strength, he bats away the blade with his own and rolls out of reach, popping up just in time to land a blow on the sith lord’s armor.
This seems to anger him more than injure him. This was a mistake.

The gantry grows narrow, he is running out of room to retreat. He is so far out of his element now, and the fear is rising faster than he can keep up with. Vader slashes at a control panel that stands between them and he makes a fatal mistake: he looks away. A blow that he should’ve been able to counter -- though perhaps not without injury -- slices through his wrist and the world is briefly eclipsed by red. His hand, still clutching his lightsaber -- his father’s lightsaber! -- spirals out of sight, and he falls to his knees before the dark terror before him.

Darth Vader is speaking now, something about completing his training, offering him a place in the Empire. Is he mad? This is the man who tortured his best friends, who is practically the embodiment of evil. He puts as much distance between himself and Vader as he is able to before making some last effort at defiance. Why would he ever join the man who killed his father?

“You don’t know the power of the dark side,” Vader seems as though he is trying to sound persuasive. He’s just coming off as terrifying. “Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father.”

And oh, this, this is something he knows. Fury outweighs pain and fear for a moment and he hisses, “He told me enough, he told me you killed him!”

And the world turns dark around him. The Force jangles across his raw nerves like the crash of cymbals and he knows something is wrong with what he just said. Vader shifts his weight, just a fraction, and oh, no no no he isn’t-- he can’t --

“No,” Vader is entirely too calm as he shatters the world and all that was right in it with his words, “I am your father.”

The wind is screaming in his ears. Or perhaps he’s the one screaming? He isn’t sure. He mutters meaningless denials that trickle down into a barely audible whimper, but he knows. The Force is humming in anticipation, and feels like a maelstrom of light and shadow clawing for purchase at his heart, but he does not feel a lie.

Darth Vader -- his father? No, no it has to be some kind of trick, some kind of- he’s not going to think about it -- is still speaking, trying to coax him back from the ledge. It would be easy, so easy to stop fighting, to take his hand and be pulled back from the edge of death. Or pulled to the edge of death? After all, what kind of treatment can the rebel son of the second most powerful man in the galaxy expect?
Or.
There is another option. There is a high likelihood that this option will end up killing him, but that might actually be preferable to a slow, painful death at the hands of the Empire. He looks Vader in what he assumes are the eyes, and he lets go of the platform.

He’s not quick enough.

Somehow, impossibly, a hand wraps around his arm, pulling him into an unbreakable grip. He’s too tired to do more than struggle feebly, the world fading into shades of gray and black as a thunderous voice proclaims, “You have run long enough, my son.”

Luke shot upright with a strangled cry, twisting out of the grasp of his captor and hitting the floor with a thud.

The room was dark, save for a small utility lamp on his desk. His jacket still hung on the back of the chair where it had gotten caught as he slept, swaying slightly. Not hands after all. Nevertheless, Luke scrambled back under his desk for a few seconds, gasping for breath and willing his heart-rate to return to normal. He scanned the room for intruders, eyes darting back and forth even as he strained his ears for the telltale sound of mechanical breathing.

Four walls, two bunks, both unoccupied at present. A door with two extra code locks he’d installed on it -- as much to keep him from lashing out at fellow rebels in moments of panic as to keep intruders out -- a small trunk with his few belongings in it, and one very concerned astromech droid. Luke groaned and scooted out from under the desk.

“I’m okay, Artoo,” he mumbled in response to the questioning whistle. “It was just a dream.”

Well, okay was probably a pretty serious overstatement, but he wasn’t experiencing any phantom pains and he hadn’t heard Vader’s voice in his head since Bespin, so that had to count for something. Artoo made a rather grumpy sounding series of hoots and blatts letting Luke know precisely what he thought of the explanation.

“Sure, buddy. Whatever you say,” Luke yawned and pulled himself upright. It was somewhere past midnight, give or take, on the artificial night-and-day cycle the ship employed, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to be up right now, one way or the other.

Still, while the nightmares had been decreasing in intensity, sleep was still not an enjoyable prospect. He hadn’t been put back on active duty yet -- and now a part of him whispered in frantic dread that it was because Command had somehow found out his secret and wouldn’t trust him anymore -- and so there were no missions to suffer from his sleep deprivation. He had not been idle though. Luke eased himself back into his chair and stared down at the mess on his desk.

There was a box of what looked like spare parts and random pieces of metal with a note slapped onto the side that read “Get well soon, Boss!”, signed by most of the Rogue Squadron. To anyone else, this would’ve seemed bizarre to the point of possibly insulting. To Luke, it was enough to make his eyes well up when his fellow pilots proudly presented the junk box to him. Propped open against the corner of the box was the journal left to him by Obi-wan. Luke studiously ignored questions about the veracity of the material, given other truths the man had omitted, and refocused his work lamp’s glow onto the pages.

He had the casing nearly complete, and he’d apparently managed to finish installing the diatium power cell before falling asleep over his work, but he was having a little trouble with the focusing lense and the crystal for his new lightsaber. He was surprised it had only taken four weeks so far. The journal seemed to suggest that obtaining a kyber crystal would be a far more arduous process.
Which it would have been, had the crystal itself not been kept in a bio-locked compartment at the back of the book. Luke wasn’t sure if that was somehow cheating or not, but there was something nice about the idea of Obi-wan just setting aside the little green stone for Luke years ago.

“May it serve you well, as it did those who came before you” had been scrawled in the back of the compartment. Luke wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps it had come out of an older lightsaber? He suspected he was going to have to use the Force to finish it, as he’d noted about the old Rodian lightsaber he’d received to study years ago, when he’d been traveling with Nakari Kelen. The trouble was, he was a little afraid that if he sank deep enough into meditation, his mind would be open to attack from those hunting him.
Or, well, one specific person hunting him.

Thoughts of lightsabers turned to thoughts of Nakari -- he allowed himself a smile, thankful that the years had dulled the pain of her loss somewhat -- and he remembered that he’d once told her he wanted a chance to speak to Darth Vader face to face someday. To discover just how he’d fallen to the dark side so that he would know what to avoid. Luke shuddered. He’d gotten his close encounter, that was for sure, and Nakari had been right when she’d told him that whatever he heard from Vader wouldn’t make him happy.
And yet, at the same time, he couldn’t deny that he still wanted to know. So many people had heard of Anakin Skywalker, had said he was a hero, a kind man with a daring streak a mile wide. How did that apply to Darth Vader? How did a man like that become what he was?
And for that matter, what did it mean in terms of who or what Luke himself would become?

Luke huffed, letting his frustration out with a breath. This wasn’t helping. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, doing his best to clear his mind. It took him a moment, but eventually he was able to tap into the Force, which met him with a warm, welcoming glow. At least that was back to normal. Well, as normal as it got for him, anyway. The first time he’d tried to meditate after Bespin, his connection had felt...well, not shaky, but not as clear as usual either. Luke sank into a light meditation and focused on the lightsaber pieces in front of him.

He couldn’t have said for sure how long he sat there, drawing on the Force and letting the light soothe his mind, but he began to pull out of it when he faintly heard a series of taps at the door. Luke blinked slowly, and reoriented himself with the room.

“Luke?” a voice called from the corridor, “I’m coming in, okay? It’s just me.”

Wedge. A half smile tugged at Luke’s lips, then turned down into a grimace. Wedge didn’t know what had happened on Bespin. What had really happened. He just sat up with him when the nightmares were too bad and gave him space when he needed it, the way he and the others had for each other time and again. Would he be as supportive if he knew why Luke was waking up sweating three nights out of the week?

With a groan, Luke shifted the chair towards the door. “Yeah, okay. I’m good.”

Wedge slipped in and let the door re-lock behind him. He raised his brows at his roommate and whistled softly. “You do know it’s morning, right? Have you slept at all?”

This time, Luke did smile. “Kinda?” he shrugged. “I was busy. It sort of snuck up on me.”

Wedge knew he was avoiding sleep, but didn’t say anything. He wandered over to the desk and dropped a ration bar with a soft click.
“There,” he said. “So the Princess doesn’t come in here and drag you to the mess hall herself.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” Luke made a face and picked up the unappetizing item. “Thanks, Wedge.”

The older pilot glanced over his shoulder and whistled again, this time appreciatively. “Nice, Luke! Is it done?”

Luke blinked and looked back down at the lightsaber on his desk. For all intents and purposes, it did appear to be finished. It seemed that meditating while working had helped after all. Setting down the ration bar, Luke picked up the hilt in his left hand. Learning to use just his left hand while the medics made the prosthetic was hard, and very frustrating, but he slightly hoped that he would be a little ambidextrous after this. The hilt was well balanced, not quite as heavy as his...father’s...lightsaber had been, and definitely made to fit his somewhat smaller hands.

“One way to find out,” Luke grinned, feeling a giddy excitement steal over him. It washed over his tired mind and banished the last dregs of the nightmare to forgotten corners. This was his lightsaber! His very own! “Er...you might want to stand back a little.”

Wedge kicked off his boots and swung himself up onto his bunk to watch. “I’ll scream real loud if the saber breaks and you blow yourself up,” he said cheerfully.

“Wedge!”

“Hey, you help in your way, I’ll help in mine.”

Luke took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and flicked his thumb over the activation switch. With a snap-hiss, a beam of emerald light flared out of the projector disc and hummed threateningly. Luke waved it back and forth in an experimental fashion, but so far nothing seemed to be amiss.

“I did it,” he whispered. “I actually did it!”

“Hot rockets!” Wedge whooped, laughing, “You sure did!” He jumped back down from the bunk and thumped Luke on the shoulder. “Guess this means you’re almost ready to get back to fighting.”

Then he frowned, as if thinking, and smacked his forehead. “Agh! I knew I came in here for a reason! Luke, I was supposed to tell you, the Princess wants to talk to you.”

Leia wanted to talk to him? That could either be very good or very bad, depending on what she wanted to say. Best case scenario, she’d found a way to rescue Han from the bounty hunter. Worst case scenario, she knew what Vader had told him. Or maybe she just had a job for him? Anything was better than sitting around and doing nothing. The sooner Command deemed him fit to lead missions again, the better.

“Okay,” Luke said, as much to himself as to Wedge. “See you later, Wedge.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Princess Leia was waiting in the forward crew quarters. She looked as tired as Luke, and he honestly could not blame her. A cold thread of guilt wove through his gut as his mind tugged him back to just why Leia and Han and Chewbacca had suffered in Cloud City. It was his fault, or for his sake, however you looked at it. Luke would have felt guilty about that even without knowing that he had a….connection….to the man responsible for harming them.

He wasn’t going to say it. He honestly did not care what the Force was pushing him towards with regards to what Darth Vader had said. He wasn’t going to even say it in his mind.

As soon as she saw him, Leia’s shoulders relaxed, as though some of the burden she perpetually carried was lessened just by his presence. Luke smothered another trickle of guilt and worked up a smile.

“I finished my lightsaber!” he announced, hoping to start the conversation off on a positive note.

“You did? Let me see!” For an instant, the same excitement he’d felt lit Leia’s eyes and took years off her face. For once, she seemed her actual age as she leaned over the hilt and ran her hand over the ribbed grip.
“I’m impressed, Luke. I didn’t think you could build one of these in a couple of weeks.”

“Neither did I,” Luke chuckled sheepishly. “Guess I’m just lucky that Obi-wan left me such detailed instructions, or I’d have never figured this thing out.” Then he decided he was better off not trying to delay the inevitable and hung the hilt on his belt once more. “Wedge said you wanted to talk to me. Is it about Han? Has there been any news?”

Leia’s face remained still, but Luke sensed a flicker of grief before she spoke. “It’s….no, not really, Luke. It’s mostly about you.”

She didn’t seem reluctant or worried, and Luke decided to interpret that as a good thing. He crossed his arms. “Okay?”

Leia folded her hands in front of her and frowned a little. “I think I’ve managed to convince Command to return you to active duty,” she began, then paused. “I can’t tell you everything that was said, you understand, but some members of the Alliance feel that when you return to leading missions, you should not be put into any situation where Vader might be present, for security reasons. Others suggest that because you actually survived a duel with him, you should actually be the first one called if Vader turns up.” her voice was low, adding to the gravity of the situation.

Luke grimaced. “Can I go with the first option?” he asked, trying to sound lighthearted, “I think I’ve seen enough of Lord Vader to last a lifetime. I have no desire to be within saber’s reach of him ever again if I can help it.”

Leia shoved at him lightly. “This is serious, Luke!" she scolded, "You could have died! The Alliance just wants to make sure-” she broke off.

“Just wants to make sure the closest thing they have to a Jedi stays alive and on their side?” Luke guessed. “I figured. It’s logical.”

Leia looked a little uncomfortable, but nodded. “No one’s questioning your loyalty, Luke,” she reassured him. “At least, not in my earshot. Not if they have any self preservation instincts. But since Command isn’t decided yet on whether you’ll be actively leading missions or just flying as usual, they’re keeping you on medical leave for one more week. Nothing outside your normal duties.”

In their secluded corner of the ship, their voices echoed only slightly, but no one was around to listen in that Luke could sense. Well, perhaps some droids, but he didn’t think they’d be interested.

“I can live with that,” he said with a small smile.

“You’re going to have to,” Leia said with an arched brow. “You don’t know what I had to do to speed things up this much.”

With a rueful look, Luke nudged her gently with his shoulder. “Let me guess, you had to promise Mon Mothma that you’d actually sleep for once.” When Leia responded with a startled look, he laughed. “That’s my main bargaining chip when I want Wedge to leave me alone.”

Leia chuckled, something muted and a little sad. She hooked her arm through Luke’s and began walking. Home One was vast and complex, but they’d both become accustomed enough to the MC80 cruiser that they rarely got lost. For a while they simply enjoyed the silence, needing no words. Cloud City still hung over their heads equally, albeit for separate reasons, and their strange connection that had left Leia able to rescue Luke still mystified them both. Neither had brought it up more than once so far: there simply wasn’t time. All Leia’s waking hours were taken up with organizing operations and tracking the whereabouts of the bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

“What am I supposed to do for another week of this?” Luke wondered out loud.

“Drills with your squadron, lightsaber practice, giving Artoo a tune-up,” Leia suggested offhandedly. They stopped near a wide viewport and took a moment to simply stare out at the stars.

The fleet was passing through the Outer Rim at present, and had encountered very little Imperial activity in this particular sector. Well, at least no more than usual.

“Oh stars, Artoo!” Luke made a face. “Has he ever had a real tune-up?”

Leaning against the window, Leia tugged at her upper lip. “I’m...really not sure. I would assume so, considering he belonged to my family and we take- we took good care of our droids. But I have no idea what kind of maintenance that particular model of R2 unit might require. He’s gotta be-” she broke off and tallied out a few fingers. “Thirty years old at the least.”

Luke almost choked. “Thirty?! That droid is older than us! Does the Alliance have maintenance manuals for droids older than the Clone Wars?”

Leia shot him a withering look. “Do we look like we can afford lots of new equipment? Almost all of our droids are old! I’m just not sure how many are pre-Clone Wars, or haven’t been insanely modified by their pilots.”

“Artoo might kill me while I sleep if I try to modify him,” Luke mused. “Maybe let’s not do that.”

Both leaned on the transparisteel, gazing out at the stars and relieved for a neutral topic to distract them. Abruptly, Leia shifted position, a sure sign she was about to speak.

“You know,” she murmured, “When I was a little girl, I remember hearing a rumor that some older Artoo units had booster rockets that actually let them fly for short distances.”

“Seriously?” Luke turned to face her. He could already think of several ways that could be useful in battle. And a few other, less practical reasons.

There was a girlish sparkle in Leia’s eyes when she nodded. “My father forbade me from trying to find out if the House Artoo units had them. Probably because I was in my pyro phase at the time.”

Her what?

“You...had a pyro phase?” Luke asked in disbelief.

“Oh yes. Fire was all the rage when I was eight,” Leia answered solemnly. “I did unspeakable things to at least one set of drapes and near exploded several sets of school assignments. Only some of it was accidental.”

Luke squinted, and then- “Ah! You’re making that up!”

Leia laughed then, a real laugh. “But I had you going, didn’t I? No, my pyro phase only lasted until Papa caught me researching “how to explode pinchy shoes” when I was seven.”

Luke decided it was probably a good thing that he and Leia hadn’t been playmates as children, vastly different social strata aside. Something important definitely would’ve blown up or been otherwise accidentally destroyed with both of them in the same place. He pondered the possibility of booster rockets for Artoo, and decided that he owed the little droid for getting them away from Cloud City when the Imperials were closing in.

“Where would I find pre-Clone Wars records on droid maintenance, do you think?” he asked.

Leia glanced over her shoulder briefly as a few crewmembers hurried past them, and she shrugged. “Offhand, I’d guess a library. If not one in the fleet, you might have to look on a planet. You might run into difficulty finding things from before the Empire that aren’t censored though. Mygeeto supposedly has a pretty free library, from what I’ve heard.”

Mygeeto. Luke had never been there, but he’d heard of it. An icy world that had seen a battle between Imperial forces and the Alliance’s Twilight Company long before he’d ever left Tatooine. He wondered if there was still enough of an Imperial presence there that he would be noticed if he went.

“Well,” he said slowly, “If I’ve still got a few more days before I’m supposed to get back to work, do you think I could get permission to fly out to Mygeeto and check out this library of theirs? If they’ve got pre-Empire records, there might be some stuff left in there from the Clone Wars that would be useful to the Alliance.”

Leia said she’d consider this, but Luke got the feeling that she’d probably get it approved unless something important came up. Everyone knew he was getting a little stir crazy having to wait on the sidelines while Rogue Squadron flew without him. It was probably for the best that he got to go do something he felt was useful to the cause for a little while.

Two days later, Luke was bundled up in all his warmest gear from Hoth -- “Because you’ll freeze out there, Desert Boy,” Zev had shouted while Wedge resolutely dropped four jackets and a blanket on top of Luke’s head. Hobbie was apparently already filling his X-wing with pocket-warmers and Luke didn’t know why Hobbie had so many of them but it was almost certainly contraband at this point -- and headed for Mygeeto. After setting the course, he allowed himself to meditate for a while, trying to shake off any lingering reluctance based on Bespin. He sensed a sort of faint unease, not quite a warning, but certainly not an indication that all was well.

It didn’t feel the way the vision of Cloud City had, but perhaps that was because he didn’t know anyone on Mygeeto. Luke considered whether it would be wiser to turn back, but that felt to him like admitting defeat. He didn’t want to be frightened of every potentially negative situation for the rest of his life, always worried that Vader might find him. Luke set his jaw and decided to push forward anyway.

The planet was, indeed, frigid, but unlike Hoth, there were cities and settlements. Luke set his X-wing down on the outskirts. He hadn’t seen much Imperial activity, but there was no point in being reckless (this time). Once he’d peeled off the flight suit and pulled his jacket on over the layers of clothing, he hopped out of his fighter and nearly slipped and fell on the crystalline terrain. His boots crunched against the ground as he scrambled to stay upright and he quickly discovered that the Rogue Squadron had not been underestimating how he would react to the cold. Teeth chattering and nose already bright red, Luke scooped up a handful of pocket-warmers from the co*ckpit and shoved them into his pockets and boots before trudging into the city.

Bent double against the wind, he found himself carefully edging across a long bridge from the sort of plateau he’d landed on to a platform that led to another bridge ending in a series of towers and skyscrapers. According to Rebel intelligence, the tall one with the reddish pink lights surrounding the top was the library. Snow and sleet nearly obscured it, but the pink glow gave Luke a direction to aim for. The goggles helped, a little, but snow was still building up on the transparent material.

On the platform between bridges, a lurmen man was renting covered speeders. They were all large, and rather exorbitantly priced, but it looked like a long walk to the library and Luke was in no mood to repeat the Hoth trek. Somewhat reluctantly, he gave a false name and paid for a one-day rental. The lurmen didn’t seem interested in his identity, which was nice, but then Luke supposed it was too cold to care who your customers were. About halfway across the second bridge, Luke heard a faint voice. He stopped to listen, but at first all he could hear was wind.

Stretching out with the Force, Luke found a group of life signs not too far away. At a guess, these were the people calling out. Luke fought the wind and turned the speeder sharply, bringing to stop at the right side of the bridge. There was another speeder there that he could just make out, a different model than the kind the lurmen had been renting out.

An Arkudan man stood in front of the speeder, stamping his feet to keep warm and shivering. Luke hopped out of his own speeder and shouted out a greeting.

“H’llo there,” the vaguely ursine man called back, “Don’t s’pose you’ve any room in that speeder of your’n? Heat’s broke in ours. Not much use going further in it.”

“And the weather in’n’t likely to get better before daybreak,” a female Arkudan hollered from inside the downed speeder.

Luke felt a little uneasy about this, but as he could not sense any malice from the stranded group, he agreed. Fitting two Arkudans, an Ithorian, and two elderly humans into the speeder with him was a little bit of a tight fit, and he had an elbow jammed into his side no matter how he turned, but somehow they made it.

“Where were you headed?” he asked.

“Oh, anywhere’s fine,” the older human man said, nodding pleasantly, “So long as we’re out of this weather!”

“Well,” Luke said slowly, “I’m headed for the library. Is that alright with you?”

The old man’s eyes lit up. “The library! Perfect place to wait out a storm! All those old data tapes make me feel young.”

The other passengers didn’t seem to have any complaints, and so Luke eased the speeder back out onto the bridge and headed for the city.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

The library was far more intimidating up close than Luke had expected. Of course, it was a little hard to focus on that when he had elbows in his ribs and an Ithorian back-seat-driving the whole way into the city.
Luke Skywalker, Commander, Jedi-in-Training, and part-time cab driver, he mused dryly. Also potentially the son of- He cut that thought off quickly. Unfortunately the more he tried to suppress those thoughts, the more often they seemed to pop back up again.

The speeder coasted to a stop in front of the black tower. It was not as tall as many of the other buildings in the city, but it was broad, and curiously designed to look less like an industrial building and more like a temple. There was an extended archway almost like a tunnel that reached out to receive visitors, likely designed to protect patrons from the wind. The red lights that had been so rosy and welcoming in the storm flickered in the snow and surrounded the library with an air more lurid than genial, painting the gleaming surfaces with a bloody glow.

Once again, Luke felt a twinge of unease as he stared up at the building. Was it a feeling from the Force, or from his own weary mind? It had to be acknowledged that on some level he was aware that he had begun to associate polished black surfaces and red glows with Darth Vader after having been in such close proximity to them.

Knock it off, he told himself firmly, This is a library. Libraries are safe. Black and red means safety right now. Maybe if he repeated it enough, he’d start to believe it.
He followed his passengers inside, and certainly did not wince when the doors hissed shut behind him. It was blessedly warm inside, and once they passed through a clinically bare foyer, he found himself relaxing. The interior of the library was nowhere near as forbidding as its exterior. Soft blue carpets blanketed the floors and patrons were huddled here and there around little tables or circles of synth-leather chairs with datapads, data tapes, and even one or two actual books.

“Well, if we’re stuck here for th’ time being,” said the Arkudan woman, “I’ll just be off to reference then. Got some reports to go over.” With that, she trundled away towards a turbolift to the far left, brushing snow off her clothes as she went.

“I’ll go too!” the Arkudan man said gleefully, “That’s where the funnies are!”

This left Luke, the Ithorian, and the two elderly humans. One of the humans settled himself down into one of the synth-leather chairs and grumbled that he was not to be disturbed. The other trailed along after Luke and the Ithorian as they made their way to what must’ve been the circulation desk.

The man behind the desk looked older, perhaps in his early sixties, but it was entirely possibly that his scarred and weatherbeaten skin simply added a few years to his face. His eyes were bright and intelligent. Luke wondered if he had been a soldier at some point. He certainly seemed to carry himself like a military man.

“Nasty out, Tars,” said the Ithorian.

“Qeward!” The librarian grinned behind his mustache and leaned over the desk to shake the Ithorian’s hand. “I didn’t know you were back in town. How’d the expedition go?”
There was something familiar about his accent, something that reminded Luke of a few Mandalorians he’d met in the Alliance, but he wasn’t sure.

“Oh it was something else, Tars,” Qeward chuckled. “We had some nasty scrapes along the way, I’ll tell you! Even ran into some unfriendly wildlife out in the plains, near the wreck.” He leaned in close, and both his mouths quirked upward into an infectious smile. “But I was right!”

“About it being a ship and not a land formation?” Tars raised his eyebrows.

Luke tried very very hard not to fidget. Clearly, the librarian and this...Qeward fellow were old acquaintances, and he shouldn’t interrupt them. But at the same time, he wasn’t all that interested in their research expedition. Neither, evidently, was the other human with him.

“Yes yes, it was a ship, you were right, I was wrong,” he grumbled. “Mr. Zim, is my hold in?”

Tars’s eyes tightened at the corners a little, but he offered a small smile nonetheless. “Let me just check a moment, Mr. Tover.”
He glanced over the desk as he flicked through the screen in front of him, and the smile disappeared. His eyes grew wide for a moment, and Luke felt a spike of fear from him. This was quickly wrestled under control.

“You fellas know the rule. No weapons in the library.” He pointed to the knife hanging from Qeward’s belt and the blaster at Tover’s side. “Right, cough ‘em up.”

The two grumbled good-naturedly, but handed over their weapons to Tars, who placed them below the desk and handed them each a small chip, presumably to help them reclaim their property when they left. Then the librarian turned a very sharp gaze on Luke, still standing behind Qeward.

“You too, kid. Hand it over.”

Sheepishly, Luke handed his blaster up to the man as Qeward shuffled away towards the lifts with a grouchy Tover in tow. “Sorry, I’ve never been to this library before. I don’t want any trouble.”

“Yeah?” Tars lost the friendly tone he’d been using before, and his face was grim. “Well you’re gonna find some if you try walking around here with a gristing lightsaber, boy.”

Luke paled. He’d thought he’d hidden it well enough under his jacket!

“I’m not an idiot,” Tars hissed, “I know what it looks like when someone’s trying to hide a weapon. Look, we don’t want any trouble here either. Just hand it over and you’ll get it back when you leave.”

Luke did not like the idea of handing his newly constructed lightsaber over to a somewhat hostile librarian. But he could sense that the man was deeply troubled, even frightened, by the fact that he had a lightsaber. He could only wonder what kind of experiences with them this man had had. Probably something to do with Darth Vader, at a guess. That was who most folk would probably associate lightsabers with these days, right? Luke couldn’t blame the man for being on edge.

“Alright,” he kept his voice low, and hopefully soothing. “No trouble, as long as I get it back.” He unclipped the hilt from inside his jacket and tried to ignore the little pang of loss when it left his hand.
He could not, however, ignore the way Tars’s hands shook when he put the saber away. The man really was afraid.

“Helly,” the man called out suddenly, “Take over for me? Need some air.”

A dark-eyed woman, perhaps in her early fifties, hurried out from a work room behind the desk. She took one look at the tension in Tars’s jaw and the dark look in his eyes and her face softened.

“It’s alright, love. Take as long as you need, I’ll hold down the desk,” she whispered.

Luke winced as Tars hurried back into the workroom and the woman raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m...not sure what just happened, but I am sorry. I didn’t mean to...whatever I did.”

The librarian offered him a lopsided smile, but there was a flicker of pain behind her eyes that reminded him of Leia. “It’s not your fault, honey. He has his good days and his bad days and he handles them as they come. I’m sure you didn’t intentionally do anything to remind him of the Clone Wars.”

Of the-? oh. That certainly explained the reaction to the saber. Maybe he’d been there when the Jedi were killed, or saw a Sith in action. There were a host of reasons someone would be skittish around a lightsaber -- which was part of why he’d been trying to hide it, not that it had worked. Luke hunched his shoulders and swallowed hard.

“Now,” said the librarian briskly, “What can I help you with?”

“Well,” Luke said slowly, “Er, I don’t have a card for this library. Would I still be allowed to look at material, even if I can’t check it out?”

“Of course!” “Helly” looked a little surprised. “That’s how libraries work! You just can’t leave with whatever you’re reading.”

Well, that was good, at least. “In that case,” Luke said, “Where would I find material about maintenance for pre-Clone Wars era droids?”

The woman leaned back and thought a moment, sucking on her teeth. “Well, let’s see. That sounds like it’ll be in the Applied Sciences sections. Downstairs, one level above Reference. You can ask the shelver down there for further clarification, she has the floor about memorized.”

Luke thanked her and headed for the same lift the others had taken before him. The lighting grew dimmer as the lift descended, and he found himself in a wide room filled with data stacks, each glowing a soft red. There was a young woman, perhaps just a little older than him, pushing a hovercart and replacing data tapes into the stacks. She shared the same dark hair and almond-shaped eyes as the woman at the circulation desk, and they sparkled a little as she looked up with a smile.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked pleasantly.

“Oh, yeah.” Luke shifted. “Sorry. The lady at the desk upstairs said you would know where to find books on droid maintenance?”

“How old? We don’t have anything from this year’s models,” the girl asked as she set down the data tape in her hand. Under her breath, Luke heard her mutter, “What’s Mom doing on the desk? Dad’s supposed to cover it until the next dropoff.”

“It’ll be older, sometime before the Clone Wars, but I’m not sure exactly when. Give or take thirty years ago?” Luke folded his hands in front of him and hoped he didn’t sound foolish.

The cart was set aside, and the shelver wiped her hands on the pale tunic in the library’s colors that she wore. “Hm. Alright, I can show you where that might be. Did you check the catalogue system to see if anything was in?”

Luke hadn’t, as a matter of fact. He wasn’t even sure where the catalogue was in this library. He reluctantly admitted as much, but the shelver seemed fairly prepared for the answer.
Evidently even the regular patrons forgot to check the system often.
She led him through a maze of columns and shelves, muttering to herself about tapes out of place and shelves looking messy. At last they rounded a corner to find the Ithorian from before.

“Miss Aeshpe!” Qeward exclaimed in delight, then winced and rubbed at his throat and chest a moment as if being loud had pained him, “How are you?”

Aeshpe greeted him cheerfully, after shushing him -- it was a library, after all. “I’ll be right with you, Mr. Qeward. Just going to help this patron here-”

“Ah yes!” Qeward nodded. “This young man -- er...Luke, something, was it? -- came to our rescue when the party and I were stranded on the way in. Blasted old wreck of a speeder finally gave up the ghost.”

He turned to Luke and winked. “Never been much of a mechanic, myself, but I suppose you’re never too old to learn. That, I imagine, is why you’re down here too?”

There was no need to inform the man that Luke had no need of learning to be a mechanic. He was a pretty decent one already. He simply shrugged and smiled as Aeshpe tiptoed to search the stacks.

“Let’s see, let’s see...speeders, factory machinery, starshiiiiiiiips ah! Droids! It’s a bit of a wide section,” she chuckled apologetically, “But then, I don’t know what kind of droid you’re looking for. The dates should be on the spine of the datapad, just above the call number.”

“Thanks,” Luke smiled at her and began perusing the titles. There were whole rows devoted to protocol droids, three tapes on pit droids -- not a popular model, apparently? -- and a whopping one pamphlet on buzz droids. Luke opened it out of sheer curiosity and found, simply, the words DO NOT printed inside.

Luke snorted and wished he’d had a holorecorder. Han would’ve gotten a kick out of that. He liked weird books like that. His smile faded and he was unprepared for the surge of anger that swept through him. Han hadn’t deserved to be tortured, frozen in carbonite, and shipped off Force-knows-where. Leia hadn’t deserved to have someone she so obviously cared about be ripped away from her again. Luke wasn’t even sure if he was angry at Vader for doing it, or at himself for being the reason Vader did it.

It wasn’t fair.

A prickle of disquiet ran down his spine suddenly, and he stiffened. Something...something wasn’t right, and it didn’t have anything to do with the slightly cooler touch of the Force when he’d been angry. No, what Luke was sensing was that someone was in pain. He paused, hand still on the pamphlet he’d been about to put back, and he looked around.

Further down the aisle, the Ithorian was grimacing. Abruptly, he began to cough, starting softly and increasing in intensity. Given that Ithorians have two mouths and four throats, the resulting sound was fairly alarming. Aeshpe appeared as if out of nowhere, brow creased in obvious concern.

“Mr. Qeward, are you alright?” she asked.

Unable to respond verbally, Qeward continued to cough and hack violently, and gestured vaguely towards his chest.

“Sir, are you choking? Can you breathe?” Luke demanded. The trickle of disquiet became a full blown stream of fear. He didn’t know first aid for Ithorians. Did rescue breathing work? If so, how did one get around the two-mouths thing?

“Here, help me!” Aeshpe snapped, grabbing hold of one of Qeward’s arms to keep him upright. “We’ll get him upstairs and call a doctor!”

They got about ten steps down the aisle before the Ithorian began to convulse. His coughs had turned into choked cries, and Luke hoped Qeward wouldn’t unleash his full lung power, or he and Aeshpe might very well end up with permanent hearing loss. As was to be expected, the racket had attracted attention. Several other patrons on the floor had come to see what the matter was, and as soon as they saw Qeward’s face twisted in pain, they ran to help stabilize his limbs.

“Easy, easy! Keep him steady!” one woman said.

“I’m already calling the doctor!” cried the man behind her.

Qeward screamed and thrashed, and it took three patrons to lay him down on the floor and keep him from accidentally punching or kicking someone. His back arched as he thrashed. This was not just some kind of breathing trouble. Something was very very wrong here.
Luke inhaled sharply and tried to calm himself before reaching out with the Force. The flickering light that represented Qeward’s life was...distorted. There was something wrong with it, warping it, almost like it was splitting into two different signatures.

There was a soft popping sound, and suddenly a spray of blood spurted from the Ithorian’s chest. Aeshpe screamed, as did several other patrons present. Everyone else grew silent for a moment, staring in horrified anticipation. Qeward thrashed again, reminding them to keep a tight grip on him, and then something moved.

Even as Qeward choked and moved his head back and forth in ever weakening motions, his tunic bunched and popped upward, like something was punching it from underneath. Luke had to make a very conscious effort to swallow back the bile rising in his throat at the sight. Other patrons weren’t quite as lucky.

Then, with a horrible, wet crunch, something emerged from the wreck of the Ithorian’s chest. At first, Luke thought it was one of his organs until it trilled and turned over, revealing smooth, pale skin and shining teeth. It had no limbs that he could see, but no one was about to reach into Qeward’s chest to retrieve it.
Qeward was male, and the creature had no eyes, which definitely ruled out the possibility of it being an Ithorian pupa. Setting aside the fact that Luke was pretty sure that wasn’t how Ithorians were born anyway.

As Qeward stopped twitching, and Luke felt his death like a sudden hole in the Force where he should’ve been, the creature -- some kind of parasite? -- opened its tiny, razor jaws wide and made a squeaky croaking sound. With tears streaming down her face, the woman who’d been holding down Qeward’s arm pulled off her shoe and raised it to attack.

“No! Don’t touch it!” Tover fought his way through the small crowd and seized the woman’s arm. “Nobody touch it! We don’t know if it’s poisonous!”

This seemed reasonable enough, and everyone shifted back a little. Luke now sorely regretted leaving his lightsaber behind. The little monster squeaked almost indignantly, then slithered out of the corpse almost faster than could be seen. It shot away into the stacks as if it had been on wheels, leaving the shell-shocked group behind it.

“Now what?” Luke breathed.

“Well I’m not staying in here!” the man who had called for a doctor announced. “Who knows how many of you are carry parasites!”

This started a round of panicked discussion that only quieted when Tover spoke up in a dull voice. “Someone has to find that thing.”

“What?” Aeshpe stared at him.

“Someone has to find it, and capture or kill it so no one else gets hurt,” said Tover. “Then we can study it to figure out what happened to Qeward.”

“We know what happened to the Ithorian,” the other man yelped, “His kriffing chest burst open!”

“Shouldn’t someone warn the people downstairs in Reference?” someone asked.

Shaking, Luke stood up. “I’ll warn them,” he volunteered. It can’t have gotten all the way down there yet, right? Besides, I’m the one who brought the guy in here.
He swallowed hard and headed for the turbolift.

***
Upstairs in the workroom, Tars Zim was not aware of the horror happening just below his feet. Breathing hard, he locked himself in a supply closet and activated a secure comm line, one he and his wife had agreed never to use except in emergencies.

“Who is this?” demanded the rather forbidding voice on the other end of the line.

Tars swallowed hard and saluted, even though the other speaker could not see him. “CT-5472-34, 212th Attack Battalion, retired. Sir.”

The voice was silent a moment, and then, “Tars, yes? There had best be an excellent reason for contacting this frequency.”

“Yes, sir!” Tars found it easy to slip back into old mannerisms. “Sir, an individual entered my place of work thirty minutes ago. He carried a lightsaber, sir.” The professional tone slipped away, and he sounded as tired and unsettled as he truly was. “Haven’t seen once since Umbara, sir. Honestly hoped I never would again.”

“Describe the individual.”

“Male, early twenties or less. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Scrawny kid.”

Then his contact sounded pleased, which was rather unexpected. “Good work, Tars. Keep him there and under no circ*mstances are you to allow him to leave. I will arrive shortly to deal with the matter personally.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

As the turbolift slowly descended further into the library, there were three things on Luke Skywalker’s mind.

First and foremost, he was wishing he’d been able to smuggle his lightsaber past the front desk. But it was no good thinking about it now. As Uncle Owen used to say, “If wishes were speeders, then beggars would fly”, usually followed by “Get off the roof before you fall and break your neck! Weren't you supposed to be fixing the vaporator anyway?”
Second, Luke had decided that he now had a decent contender to oust Hobbie’s usual stories from their usual place at the top of Rogue Squadron’s Great Big List of Worst Ways to Die. The rather macabre document was circulated among multiple squadrons and ground teams looking for a little black humor to help them cope. Wes had kept the lead for three days with the entry Sat on by a Hutt.
The third thing bouncing around Luke’s head was a persistent thought that he should’ve said a proper goodbye to Leia that morning. It was a gloomy thought, and he tried to tell himself that he’d been through worse and survived, but he had also wished in each of those situations as well that he’d said his farewells earlier.

The door slid open, cutting his introspection short, and Luke found himself on the Reference floor. There was no carpet here, just bare, polished pourcrete. The lights were dimmed, though for what purpose Luke could not tell, and the shelves were just pillars and columns of black metal, holding softly glowing tapes and pads. Black and red again, Luke thought with a grimace.

The first person he found was the Arkudan lady who had planned to work on reports down below. Her squat frame was pulled up into a rather uncomfortable-looking crouch on a chair not meant to be used in that manner as she leaned over a desk. Upon hearing Luke’s footsteps, she glanced up.

“Watch it, something came slithering through here,” she said with a shudder. “Th’ library don’t usually have vermin, but with the storm headed our way, can’t say as I blame ‘em for seeking shelter an’ all.” She turned back to her work, muttering, “Still. So long’s they don’t go slithering over my feet, we’ll be fine.”

“No you won’t,” Luke said bluntly. He was a little too on-edge for niceties. “That vermin that just came through here killed someone. The folks upstairs are getting help.”

The woman swiveled her head and fixed an incredulous eye on the young man. “That thing? Killed sommat? What’d it do, slime him to death?”

Luke could feel himself beginning to get frustrated. She wouldn’t know, of course, because she hadn’t been there, but as he was still deeply disturbed by what he had seen, he didn’t hold on to his temper quite as well as he should have.

“Didn’t slime him,” he said, a touch peevishly. “It burst out of someone’s chest and he died.” Then he blanched, realizing what he was about to have to announce. He definitely should’ve chosen his words better.
“I’m...I’m so sorry, it was your companion, Qeward.”

The Arkudan froze, wide eyes finding Luke’s as they stretched in horror and disbelief. “Wh- no, no there must be some mistake! Qeward would never have- but it’s only been two days and- what do you mean it burst out of his chest?!”

Something about the garbled denials sounded a little odd to Luke, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Leaving out as many of the disturbing details as he could, he explained what happened. The nagging at the back of his mind persisted the longer he watched her horrified face. Did she have some idea of what that thing was?
He didn’t have time to ponder it, he needed to find the other patrons, and the longer he remained stationary, the more his strained nerves were twisting from worry to fear.

His sleep deprivation didn’t help much, either..

“Listen, ma’am-”

“Zalbeth.”

“What?” Luke blinked.

“My name is Zalbeth,” the woman repeated mechanically.

“Zalbeth, okay,” Luke nodded and tried to sound soothing. “Zalbeth, it’s really really important that we warn everyone on this floor that there’s a dangerous animal in here. If no one is armed, it’ll be harder to deal with.” Since he didn’t really like the idea of sending the shocked woman to wander around looking for more patrons, he added, “If you don’t want to stay down here, you should probably go find Tover upstairs. You guys came here together, right?”

She stared a little vacantly at him and murmured, “We were on the expedition together, yes.”

Well, he’d meant they’d been together when he flew them to the library, but-
The expedition.
That was the second time an expedition had been mentioned. Qeward, Tover, and evidently Zalbeth had all gone to the hill that was apparently a ship -- or was it the other way around? Luke couldn’t remember -- and presumably the other two passengers had as well. It probably wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions at this point, but perhaps the expedition and the creature were connected? Though that still left the question of how the little monster had gotten into someone’s chest cavity.
And that was a memory that left him nauseous again.

When he realized that Zalbeth probably wasn’t in a good frame of mind to help him warn other patrons, Luke left her near the turbolift and headed back into the stacks. Naturally, every little sound put him on edge and it was all too easy to imagine the nasty thing hiding on the tops of data stacks, waiting to drop onto his head. At least it wasn’t a Fexian brain-sucker. Luke was of the opinion that those were worse, so far. And besides, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been around death before -- not that he thought he could ever just get used to the presence of death. But then, most death he encountered was in battle, when he didn’t have time to focus on much besides survival. Death in a place that should’ve been safe was somehow much more jarring.

The next patron he met was a human man in his forties, who was very opposed to leaving.
“Do you know how long I’ve had to wait for this particular almanac to come in?” he demanded, puffing out his chest, “Where is this “dangerous animal” of yours? I’ll take care of it!”

“Sir, I don’t recommend-”

The man -- Ras something, Luke didn’t catch the rest -- cut him off with a rude snort and jumped up from his chair. “You kids these days, can’t handle a few vermin every now and then. You wouldn’t have lasted a minute when the Clone Wars were going on!”

Amused, despite himself, Luke wondered what the man would’ve thought if he’d known he’d been talking to a member of the Rebel Alliance. Of course, it wouldn’t do to go spreading that kind of information about, so he mildly suggested that if Ras ran across any other patrons, he might want to warn them, and offered to help the man look for the animal once he’d warned everyone.

Fifteen nerve-wracking minutes later, he’d warned everyone on most of the floor. The majority of them, unnerved by the idea of vermin in the stacks, had agreed to go back upstairs. A good six or seven, however, insisted that one small animal was pretty easily avoided, and they’d probably seen worse in their own local parks. Luke headed back for the lift to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone and frowned. Zalbeth wasn’t with the others nervously waiting for the next lift up anymore. The Force twinged uneasily around him at that.

“Hey,” he tapped a lurmen woman on the shoulder. “Sorry, have you seen an Arkudan lady? She was here a few minutes ago.”

“She said she wasnae feeling too well,” the woman answered. “Went to find the other Arkudan, I think.”

Luke nodded, and wondered why he hadn’t seen the male Arkudan yet. The turbolift arrived at their floor once more and the person inside was nearly trampled by the patrons scrambling to get on. Aeshpe staggered through the press of the crowd and brushed her bloodstained tunic off. Her face was pale and her jaw was tight.

“Luke, right? Tover’s coming down in a few minutes with a stun-stick to help look. How many are still on this floor?” she asked Luke, brandishing a bulky old flashlight that probably hadn’t been used since the Clone Wars. Her voice was surprisingly steady, but Luke could feel her fear mingling with his own nervousness.

“Seven, I think. Possibly nine, I think two of Qeward’s colleagues are in here still,” Luke answered. He glanced down at his own clothes, also spattered with blood, and felt his stomach turn. He could only imagine how the librarian probably felt.

“Has anyone seen the animal yet?” Aeshpe started moving towards the stacks, turning the light this way and that. “I told front desk there was an incident, but they don’t know details yet.”
As a matter of fact, she’d barely managed to blurt out to her mother that Qeward was dead before her father had reacted. “The library is going into lockdown, we need to get everyone upstairs so we can find this thing and kill it.”

Of course, Tars had demanded that she return to the main floor immediately, and not put herself in harm’s way. But frightened though she was, Aeshpe couldn’t stomach the idea of leaving patrons unwarned on her shift.

Luke nodded and walked slowly through an adjacent row of shelves, scanning about for any signs of the creature. “I haven’t seen anything so far, but one of Qeward’s companions said it slithered past her earlier.”

He caught a glimpse of the loud man, Ras, and waved to get his attention. “See anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing here, either,” Aeshpe called from further down. As long as she remained busy, she could keep some modicum of calm.
It was a sentiment Luke was familiar with.

“Excuse me,” a fourth voice joined them, another of the patrons who had intended to stay. “But have any of you actually given thought to what you’ll do when you find this thing?”

Apparently, none of them had. Luke’s first inclination was to trap it. After all, if it was just an animal, it probably wasn’t doing what it did out of malice. Instincts were instincts and a creature did what it had to do to survive. But on the other hand, if anyone else was at risk, then it would have to be prevented from harming anyone.
That, and it was just plain disturbing.

“There’s storage boxes down here somewhere, right? That the shipments from other branches come in?” said the Gran, “We can put it in that.”

“It punched its way out of an Ithorian’s chest,” Aeshpe snapped, waving her flashlight in their direction, “A little crate made of cast-plast isn’t going to stop it if it wants to get out.”

They lapsed into silence with this dismal announcement, A heavy gloom seemed to darken the atmosphere more than the dimmed lights would’ve donel, and little more was spoken than the occasional whispered report that no creature had been found. Even Ras had quieted, and Luke supposed he’d finally taken notice of the blood on his and Aeshpe’s clothing.
Aeshpe, he noticed, was behaving more like a soldier in the Alliance might than what he’d have expected from a librarian. Stoic and silent, she shone her light into dark corners and tried to hide the fact that her hands were trembling. He couldn’t blame her. They’d both just watched someone die. At least she hadn’t felt it in the Force like he had.

The thought repeated in his head and Luke felt his face flush. The Force! Why hadn’t he tried to use the Force to find the creature’s life signature? He felt like an idiot. A justifiably distracted idiot, but still. Luke slipped between two rows of data columns and closed his eyes. He stretched out with the Force and-
Death.
Cold.
Fear.
Grief.
Death, not Qeward, recent. Fear and pain and deathandcoldandfearand-
Luke pulled back, breathing hard. He wasn’t sure when he’d gone from standing to crouching, but he didn’t care. So many negative emotions filled the room, it felt too much like the cave on Dagobah. Too much like Bespin.
Too much like your f-

Luke shook his head sharply. “Concentrate,” he whispered sternly to himself, and tried to imagine Yoda glaring disapprovingly at him. Surprisingly, that helped. Taking a deep breath and letting as much fear as he could out with the exhale, Luke tried again.
He could sense Aeshpe two rows over to his left, grieving but determined. Just ahead and to his right was the Gran worried about catching the creature, and somewhere behind him were two huddled life signs that were most likely some of the other stubborn patrons. Somewhere to the left of Aeshpe was Ras, and another life sign, and then there were two or three more -- it was hard to tell -- to Luke’s far right. He could sense pain in some of them, but the preponderance of fear and anger swirling through the air made it difficult to pinpoint anything specific.

One librarian, one Luke, and six patrons. But that wasn’t right, there were supposed to be about nine. He thought of the feeling of death he’d picked up and closed his eyes. Oh no.

“Hey, er, guys?” the worried patron to his right called out, “There’s...ah, there’s blood up here. A lot of it. Looks like it leaked down here from over by the tables...I really really don’t want to go look.”

“Someone could be injured!” Aeshpe called back. “Can you at least see if anyone’s alive over there?”

Luke heard the Gran whimper as he went to go look. Then Ras shouted from the left, “It’s alright, kids, I found it! Yep, it was a pretty good size snake, I suppose.”

Luke hurried out of the shelves and nearly collided with Aeshpe, who was tiptoeing to see over a lower shelf, but was not moving any closer. “It...wasn’t a snake,” she called back.

“Sure it’s a snake!” the man snorted. “Doesn’t have any limbs, long body, looks like it was prehensile, too.”

“Was?” Luke and Aeshpe said together.
As if in response to their exclamation, the lights flickered.

“Hey!” Aeshpe started forward. “Are you messing with the reference generator? Knock it off! Without the lights, we’re not going to find that thing again!”

“It’s not me!” Ras retorted, “I bet your snake-on-the-loose got into the wires or something.”

Luke wove around another shelf until he could see the patron. “You said you’d found it,” he pointed out.

“More or less,” Ras shrugged. “See for yourself.” He pointed down at what appeared to be the very same creature from before. Insides flip-flopping bad idea bad idea, Luke gingerly eased over and prodded it with his boot. The skin easily gave way with a faint crinkling sound.

It was just a skin. There was a long split down its back, perfectly neat, almost as if cut with a lightsaber. Luke paled. Whatever the thing was, it had evidently molted. Which meant it might be larger now, and possibly hungry.

The life sign he’d sensed near Ras moved suddenly, and the Force twisted into an icy knot of fear and warning around them. Something was dripping from the cables that fed into the lights above them. There was a buzzing snap, and the overhead lights died with a soft whine. The only lights left were the red glow of the data tapes in their slots, casting everything into sharp reliefs of blood red and deep shadow. The patron frowned and looked up, only for some clear, viscous fluid to spatter onto his face. Gagging, he swore and wiped the goo from his eyes. Something moved in the shadows.

“Seven rings!” the Gran suddenly cried out, “These people are dead!”

The dripping increased, accompanied by a very soft hiss. Luke swallowed hard. “Okay, Ras, you need to walk towards me, very slowly,” he whispered, “Don’t look up.”

He could just barely make out a large shape clinging to the cables above, and it was hard to make out its actual size or details, but it was definitely descending towards the patron.
There was a horrific cracking noise, and Ras shrieked as something protruded from his chest with a spray of blood. But it wasn’t a snake-like creature this time. It was the tip of a long, barbed tail-like appendage that twisted in place and yanked its unlucky victim back into the shadows. His death jangled across the Force like the vibrations in a spider’s web.

In the scattered and illogical thoughts floating around his mind -- what little of his mind wasn’t preoccupied with run, hide, survive -- Luke found that he was surprisingly glad he hadn’t eaten more than two bites of the ration bar that morning. He would certainly have thrown it back up again now as the smell of blood mixed with something rank and unidentifiable. It occurred to him a second later that standing still was a very bad idea.

Luke dropped into a crouch and crawled to where Aeshpe stood frozen, murmuring something under her breath.

“Miss Aeshpe?” he whispered.

“I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die,” she was shaking, hands clenched so tightly into the fabric of her tunic that her knuckles were white. She made a sound that was part scream, part sob when Luke reached up and took her hand.

A long hiss emanated from the darkness, and there was a faint suggestion of movement in their direction.

“Shh!” Luke pulled her down next to him and held a finger to his lips. “Are there any emergency exits?”

She stared at him, breathing hard. “I don’t wanna die!” She pulled away from Luke and scrambled into the stacks.

In the shadows, the creature made another long, sibilant hiss and there was a muffled thump. Luke, weaponless and very unsettled, decided discretion was the better part of valor and crawled after Aeshpe as fast as he could. Both froze, backs against a shelf, when heavy footsteps echoed from behind the rows.

It’s got legs?! Luke mouthed.
The tread shook some of the datapads in their designated places as the monster -- for what else could they call it? -- passed their hiding place and moved on ahead and to the right.

Had it missed them somehow? They weren’t particularly well hidden. Then again, when it was still a small snake-thing, it hadn’t had any noticeable eyes. Perhaps it relied on its other senses, like hearing?

“Guys, why is the light off? What happened to the other guy?” The Gran from before whimpered. “Guys? Is that you?”

Luke met the eyes of the young woman next to him and he could see similar thoughts to his in her eyes.. He could call out to warn the Gran, and thus potentially save him from the Thing, but that would give his and Aeshpe’s position away. Or, he could keep silent, let the creature take the Gran instead of him and Aeshpe.
But that felt selfish, and not like something a Jedi would do. (Was he a Jedi? Did Yoda’s half-completed training count?) Taking a breath, he prepared to take the course of action that was potentially less wise. Skywalker to the core, he thought bleakly. Whatever that means now.

“Hide!” he shouted, and pulled the librarian into the next aisle with him.
The Thing’s heavy footsteps slapped the pourcrete floor as it darted back in their direction
The two humans split up, Aeshpe scurrying ahead with surprising silence -- or perhaps not so surprising, for a librarian -- and Luke to the right. From the sounds of things, the monster chose to follow him.

This was worse than being stalked through the inner workings of Cloud City by Darth Vader. Vader at least had the courtesy to tell you what he wanted before (or occasionally after) trying to kill you. Luke tried to release his fear into the Force; in fact it felt like he was throwing whole handfuls of it into the Force, but with no noticeable difference. A thump sounded much too close to him and he froze. An awful, wet, snuffling sound accompanied the rasp of a heavy tail dragging across pourcrete. Was that its breathing, or was it trying to smell him out?

One hand clamped over his mouth and nose to muffle his rapid breathing, Luke very carefully raised his other hand and gestured. A data tape clattered to the ground in an aisle a little further away with a loud clack! As the Thing hissed and stalked over to investigate, Luke got a glimpse of an elongated cranium and a row of spiny protrusions from the spine, ending in the prehensile tail. He had never seen or heard of anything like it before. It looked like the physical embodiment of a nightmare.

Luke tried to project you don’t hear me as he crawled, heading for the life signs from earlier on the far right. They hadn’t moved as far as he could tell, which might’ve meant they were unconscious. Or perhaps they’d found a good place to hide.

Huddled under a table in a small alcove were the Arkudans. Zalbeth rocked back and forth quietly, clutching her middle. When Luke got close enough, she looked up and whispered, “Qeward said we’d all be fine. He said we were alright, he said!”

The Arkudan man lay on his back next to Zalbeth, eyes glassy and staring at nothing. The gaping hole in his chest made it fairly obvious how he’d died. The blood around the horrific wound was not fresh. It looked as though it had happened sometime earlier. How had Luke missed this? Was it when the patrons were all scrambling to get onto the lift?
And where was the other creature? Were there two, or one small one and one big one?

He couldn’t breathe. He felt cold fear wrapping around his chest, constricting his lungs. Luke regretted more than ever not having his lightsaber with him. When the table shook with the sudden weight of something monstrous, Luke only barely caught the scream before it left his lips. He bit down on his lip almost hard enough to draw blood when the barbed tail slipped down to rest, twitching, inches from his leg.

Zalbeth moaned softly, and the staccato hiss above them sharpened into a soft growl. Frantic, Luke clapped a hand over Zalbeth’s mouth. Don’t notice us, there’s nothing here! He projected the thoughts at the creature, hoping it was of a kind easily influenced by the Force. Please, please don’t notice us!

Long, tapered fingers wrapped slowly around the edges of the table, still dripping blood and some other fluid. It knew where they were, Luke was convinced. I don’t want to die here! He found himself thinking, echoing Aeshpe. He shut his eyes and wished fervently that someone, anyone would arrive with a weapon to deal with the creature. Something like a terse acknowledgment thrummed through the Force and into his mind, leaving him confused.

The sound of feet slapping against the floor echoed through the silent chamber, and the weight on top of the table shifted with an eager snarl. Someone was making a run for the lift. Luke opened his eyes when he sensed that it was the Gran, and he could just barely see the silhouette of the man charging towards the opposite end of the room. The monster launched off the top of the table and Luke got a good look at how fast it could move.

He crawled out from under the table and turned to face Zalbeth. “Let’s go!” he hissed.

She didn’t look at him. The Arkudan wrapped her arms tighter around herself and moaned. Luke swallowed hard. “I’m going to find the others,” he whispered, “I’m coming back. Stay out of sight.” He wasn’t sure she understood, but he couldn’t stay out in the open.

The Gran screamed, and Luke didn’t have to use the Force to guess what had happened. It wouldn’t occur to him for another few days, but the creature did not appear to be consuming any of the people it had killed so far. He would later wonder about its motivation, but at that point his mind would be on other, more pressing things.

With a shaky grasp on the Force, Luke moved silently through the stacks, pausing and dropping down to hide every time he heard the slightest shift, until he’d reached the place where he sensed Aeshpe was hiding. She was crouched between a wall and a row of shelves, trembling.

“Can you see it?” she barely whispered.

Luke squinted into the darkness, but for all intents and purposes, it had vanished.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

The soft red of the data discs and tapes, usually a comforting glow for Aeshpe, now gave the stacks a considerably more sinister look. The scent of blood mingled with the normal dust of the electronics, coating her throat and squeezing her lungs. This wasn’t right. None of it was right! Aeshpe didn’t care how childish it might sound: she wanted her parents. She wanted to go home. She crouched behind one column and furrowed her brow at the young man across from her.

"We need to get out of here!" she barely whispered. Not that they could run for the turbolift -- or run at all, since that seemed to bring the creature down on them faster than anything else. The Gran was the grisly proof of that, though whether the creature was still there with him was probably debatable at this point.

The boy shook his head wildly and held a finger to his lips, mouthing, "Not yet!"

Aeshpe glared and swiped away tears before they could properly form. Tears would only make it harder to see, and she needed every advantage she could wrest from this horrific situation. She'd just been doing her job as a clerk, helping a guest patron find a data tape while her mother worked front desk so her father could recover from...what, a flashback? Maybe, some days he just needed space. The last thing she had expected was for one of the regular patrons down in the basem*nt stacks to abruptly collapse, complaints of chest pains quickly evolving into something considerably more dire. Aeshpe had to fight back a wave of sorrow at that. Qeward had been a regular fixture in the library since she was ten, sitting on the counter with her legs swinging while the Ithorian talked shop with her father. Stars, he’d even come to her graduation!
And while she didn’t know his companions personally, they were equally regular patrons and she’d been accustomed to seeing them there. To die in the library -- her library -- and in such an awful way….she couldn’t think about it. She didn’t even know how to think about it.

"I am not staying down here with that thing!" Aeshpe hissed, near hysterics. "You asked for an emergency exit, and we are getting to one. Remember where the Gran said the dead people were? It’s that way. If there’s anyone else alive in here, that’s probably where they’ll head too!"

"Yeah, no I wasn't disagreeing with that," the boy -- Luke something, she thought? No one in her family was good at remembering names that weren't in the library catalogue -- grimaced, and she noticed that his voice was shaking as much as hers was. That was comforting, at least.. "But I think that thing is attracted to sound. Whatever way we go, it's gotta be quiet."

Luke decided not to tell Aeshpe about how close he’d come to being caught by the creature. She didn’t look like she could handle that kind of information right now. He thought of gnarled, clawed hands wrapping slowly over the edge of the table and shuddered. But he would still have to tell her about the Arkudan man.

“There’s something else,” he warned. “I found another one of the expedition members. He...he died the same way Qeward did.”

Aeshpe stared at him in horror, and a distant click made both of them jump. “There’s another one in here?” the whisper came out more like a sob, and her fingers dug into her arms.

Luke closed his eyes for a moment and beetled his brow. Then, without warning, he lunged forward and grabbed Aeshpe's hand. 'We gotta move!"

As they crawled along the basem*nt floor, taking cover behind pillars of data, Aeshpe happened to glance back and between the rows.
Red light reflected dully off of polished black hide, more like chitin than skin, and an elegantly nightmarish figure swung its long head from one side to the other as if listening. A long, barbed tail flicked lazily back and forth for a moment, then the bipedal creature resumed walking. Well, stalking might've been the better term.

That was what was killing the patrons? She hadn’t gotten a good look at it before. How had that come from the little eyeless snake thing that had come out of Qeward’s chest? Or was this the one that had come out of the Arkudan? Aeshpe let Luke pull her along after him and tried -- oh she tried -- not to feel bitter.
If he hadn’t come here, they would be alive. If he hadn’t brought Qeward’s team to the library, we’d all be okay still.
It wasn’t quite true, she knew. Chances were, Qeward and the Arkudan man -- Silvo? Soli? She couldn’t remember his name now. Was it important? -- would still be dead, unless the cold slowed those...things. People would still have died. But they wouldn’t have come to the library. She wouldn’t be stifling tears and crawling along a bloodstained floor, avoiding what appeared to be an apex predator of undetermined species.

Luke and Aeshpe moved as silently as they could, with Luke periodically closing his eyes and stretching out a hand before changing the direction of their route abruptly.
It looked, Aeshpe thought, unsettlingly like something the fabled Jedi from her mother's childhood would've done. She hoped he wasn't a Jedi. The library didn't need that kind of trouble brought down on them, legal or emotional. Aeshpe knew her father had nightmares about Jedi still, even twenty two years after the fall of the Republic.

The going was excruciatingly slow. Hardly daring to breathe, librarian and rebel had to crawl or crab-walk from data column to data column, flinching every time one of them made the slightest bit of noise. Once, a shrill scream cut across the air, which was growing increasingly rank. They couldn’t tell if it was one of the creatures vocalising, or a patron who had somehow escaped before meeting their doom. Neither really wanted the answer to that question.
It was like a game of hide-and-seek, almost, but where losing did not make you “it”. It made you dead.

There was a row of shelves that held datapads rather than tapes that stood perpendicular to the aisle they were creeping along. Behind it was a table that the Gran had probably discovered the dead patrons at, and a wall just beyond it. The space between the shelves and the wall would likely be too narrow for the creature -- creatures? -- to fit into unless they could somehow compress their exoskeletons. It would make for a decent temporary hiding place if they could make it over the open space between the aisle and the shelves without being killed.

Luke went first, senses extended out to either side. Danger crackled in the air around him, hissing through the Force in giddy whirls of unsettling motion. He sensed death in nearly every direction, lingering in the places where patrons had died. But he didn’t sense the big creature in their immediate vicinity. Luke stepped as carefully as he had in the cave on Dagobah -- perhaps not the best comparison to make, he decided with a grimace -- until he’d eased down under the table at the end of the shelves and gestured Aeshpe to follow him. So help him Force, he was going to get her back to her parents. At least she still had both of hers.
A quick scan again with the Force suddenly revealed the second creature. It felt small, still. Perhaps it hadn’t molted yet? Luke hoped so. He and Aeshpe eased back between the wall and the shelves and began to feel their way along the row.

Both froze when they heard the creature hiss on the other side of the row of columns they were hiding behind. Slowly, unbearably slowly, Aeshpe pointed down the wall towards an unassuming door marked Employees Only. This led to a data disc repair center, with a flight of stairs leading to the first floor in the event that the turbolift broke down. With any luck -- which they’d had a moderate amount of thus far, seeing as they were both still breathing -- they’d be able to punch the code in before the creatures got to them.

Luke shimmied a little closer to the end of the row and stretched out with the Force again to try to pinpoint the other monster's location. Yes, there it was, like a small knot of hunger and rage, creeping stealthily towards their end of the row to join the smaller one. The small one quickly backed off, probably unwilling to cross the big one, and disappeared beyond the range of Luke’s sense. Luke frowned and stretched out further, trying to find it again. And if he extended his senses upward, he found-

Luke pulled back abruptly and his eyes snapped open. His prosthetic hand throbbed for two seconds with phantom pain, and he gritted his teeth against the wall of cold and grasping darkness he could feel pressing down on him. It was a vivid enough feeling that he could almost see tendrils of solid shadow seeping through the ceiling, spreading out in search of one particular person.
He was not ready to confront this particular issue. Not by a long shot.

Luke sped up a little, even knowing it would make more sound. Just as they reached the door, they heard the larger monster make a sibilant, rattling hiss and there was a heavy clunking sound. His heart sank.

"It's climbing the stacks!" Aeshpe whispered, terrified. Her thoughts were screaming so loud that he could hear them plainly. We’re going to die! We’re going to die and I’ll never see my family again - oh no no please I don’t want to die like this- not like this-

Luke couldn't help sharing her rather bleak internal assessment of the situation. “Go, I’ll cover you,” he breathed, even knowing he had nothing but the Force to protect them both. Hopefully that would be enough until they could get into the room. There were no other patrons nearby, even though Aeshpe had been certain any survivors would make their way to this door. Perhaps there were no other survivors.
He waited until she'd keyed open the door -- hands shaking, hitting the wrong keys twice -- then dove inside and shut the door behind him.

A sense of relief washed over him. As far as he could tell, the thing couldn’t open doors. Even if, for some reason, it had the intelligence required to operate the mechanism, it would have no way of knowing the code to open an employees-only door. There was a slight risk that its powerful tail could punch through the metal, but as long as they kept away from the door, Luke doubted it would be able to get at them.

"That was close," he gasped. "Does this room have any exits leading to the street?" He felt like a coward the moment the words left his lips. He couldn’t just abandon the library while those things were running loose, could he? But then, they had the weapons upstairs and he was completely unarmed. Not to mention who was waiting for him up there. Or not waiting. He might’ve been on the move by this point, but Luke was not about to check and draw attention to himself.

"What?! No! You're not leaving until we warn my parents and evacuate everyone upstairs!” the librarian snapped, tears still hanging at the edges of her lashes, “We’re underground anyway. No way to the street. And you’re the one who brought Qeward and his team in here!" Aeshpe poked around the room for anything she could use as a weapon. A tiny prick of guilt touched her mind as she blurted out her accusation, but she wouldn’t retract it now.

"I'd never met him before today!" Luke protested. But he couldn’t help feeling that she had a point. If he’d left the Ithorian and his crew stranded in the snow, maybe the cold would’ve killed the creatures. But it also would’ve killed them, and that was the same to Luke as actively killing them himself. There really wasn’t a right answer, was there? This was going to be just one more thing that kept him up at night.
Provided he actually survived until night.

Then, deciding it was best to be honest about the situation with the slightly older girl, he sighed. "Truth is, things upstairs aren't likely to be much better."

Aeshpe paled. "What do you mean?" she demanded. How could it possibly be worse upstairs? And how would Luke know?

"Darth Vader is up there. Right now." Luke kept the statement short and matter of fact, and willed himself not to fiddle with the mechanical hand. It had only been four weeks since Bespin and he did not need this right now. He tried very hard to ignore the persistent pressure at the back of his mind, all too similar to when the Falcon had been escaping.
This time, however, he had no intention of responding on instinct and betraying himself with a single word. Even if that word had been floating to the forefront of his mind more stubbornly the harder he tried to deny it.

"Darth V-? Are you a Rebel?!" Aesphe's outraged expression was punctuated by the door rattling. "Do you know how much trouble you may have gotten my family in? Especially if he's here?!" It seemed absurd to be as apprehensive of one man as she was of the Things, but even if her father had always spoken admiringly of Vader as “a warrior born, not one to let others do his work for him”, she knew his reputation. He was probably exactly as deadly as the monsters outside the door.

Luke made an apologetic face, and ducked his head. "I know, I know. I’m so sorry, Aesphe, you have to believe me," he groaned. “I swear, I never thought this would happen. I’ll do what I can to protect your parents, I promise, but-”

Luke!

He blanched, forgetting for a moment that Aeshpe wouldn’t be able to hear what he was hearing through the Force and a connection he was still trying not to think about. (Although that was feeling like an increasingly futile endeavor) Don’t answer, don’t answer, don’t give away your position, he repeated silently, hoping to block out the authoritative voice.

Remain where you are. I am coming.

A traitorous emotion that was much too much like relief flashed through him. Relief? Why should he feel relief? He was just choosing between a quick death and a slower death, wasn't he? Though he supposed death by lightsaber was probably preferable to death by spiky tail or however the other patrons had died.
Luke was fairly certain that death was coming either way. Vader had given him an ultimatum more than once in Cloud City: join him or be destroyed.
And Luke definitely hadn’t chosen to join him. He might not have known much about the inner workings of the Empire, but he was fairly certain that people didn’t usually live long enough to say no to Darth Vader twice.

The door rattled again, and then all hissing came to a stop as the Thing apparently turned away to inspect something new. Luke felt the breath of ice just as the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber igniting filled the air. There was a terrible clattering sound, and then he could only sense one set of intentions beyond the door.

"Ah." said Luke morosely, "I'm dead."

Aeshpe backed up, shoulder touching his, and pointed to a strand of viscous ooze dripping from one of the open overhead vents. "Correction-” she whimpered, “-we're dead."

The vents. It could fit in the vents.

This seemed to be the very definition of "between a rock and a hard place". Sith Lord on one side of the door, (and he definitely knew Luke was there. The almost visible tendrils of shadow crept under the door to grasp at him, wrapping around his ankles and up around his arms) and some horrific semiparasitic death machine on the other. If he'd still had his lightsaber, Luke bet he could've taken it in a fight, but the librarian at the front desk had meant business. All the weapons had been left at the desk. All of them.
Which probably meant his f- that Vader had it now.

Still, Luke had seen what the creatures had done to the few other patrons downstairs, and he felt the guilt and responsibility for the attacks weighing on his shoulders. Whatever else happened to him, he at least owed it to the librarians to get Aeshpe out and back to safety. Perhaps the Imperials would view them as “good citizens” for turning in a rebel, rather than accomplices for having him in the building. Not that the Empire calling you a good citizen was something to be proud of, but better that than dying because of someone else’s mistakes. Luke felt the attention of the Sith beyond the door center on him with laser focus and nearly took his chances with the thing climbing down the vents. But he did his best to steel his nerves (failed utterly in that regard) and reached for the door controls.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

When Darth Vader had received an encrypted communication from a retired clone trooper he hadn’t expected it to be about Luke. If he had been willing to admit it, part of him might even have realized that he had been almost hoping it was one of the original members of the 501st calling to complain about bureaucrats and current stormtroopers. Appo sometimes did. Both knew they shouldn’t, that it was better to pretend that neither had ties to a past that was more complicated than was healthy for a servant of the Empire. Nevertheless, it was a considerable source of relief to have someone else to commiserate with over the gross incompetence of the Empire’s Finest on a secret comm line that very few living men knew about.

This was, in part, why he’d been wholly unprepared to hear from Tars, retired to Mygeeto after the Umbara Incident.
After watching his brothers being murdered by the rogue Jedi, Pong Krell, it was hardly surprising that Tars would be apprehensive around lightsabers of any sort. Vader supposed he ought to be grateful that Tars still considered him trustworthy, though his knowledge of the past made him a bit of a liability. But the moment Tars had mentioned a boy with a lightsaber, the Force had leapt up around him triumphantly and he’d known.

This was his chance. He would travel to Mygeeto, reclaim his boy. Perhaps -- a trickle of the Force that sounded altogether too much like a conscience whispered -- perhaps start again with him, try to lead him gradually to understand the truth that was his heritage and the Dark Side, rather than belabor him with it all at once. Grudgingly, he allowed that he had been...over hasty in his efforts to claim his son before. Physical and emotional shock compounded with each other had not put Luke in the most rational of mindsets, and he really shouldn’t have expected a more logical response to the truth.

Then there was the matter of their bond through the Force. He had heard Luke answer him as he stood on the bridge of his star destroyer. Luke knew. Whether he had fully accepted it yet was debatable, but he knew in his heart that Vader had not lied to him. But since Bespin, Luke’s side of the bond had been silent and dormant. It had taken great restraint on Vader’s part not to pry, to jolt it into wakefulness and demand an answer. He had made a few testing probes into the bond in weeks past, but the unrestrained terror that answered him had quickly made him withdraw.

A bit of apprehension would have been appropriate, and respect, certainly, given his status as his father, a Sith lord, and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy. But that level of fear and distrust was completely unproductive and, if he were being honest with himself, not a little unsettling. Clearly, he needed to have a word with the boy.

All introspection had ground to a screeching halt the instant the Executor entered Mygeeto’s orbit. The Force screeched warnings, scraping across his nerves and scrabbling up his spine in an icy premonition. Something was wrong.
Luke was in danger.

He felt a twinge along the bond -- for a moment, barely even a few seconds, it was active -- and felt Luke’s desperation for someone to help him. He sent a terse acknowledgment that he had meant to be reassuring along their connection and it was a testament to the boy’s current state that he did not instantly recoil.

Knowing the Rebels, he’d likely gotten himself into whatever predicament it was without any help at all. But Vader did not sense any danger to himself specifically, nor had comm-scan picked up any other ships, and so he doubted that there were other Rebels coming to aid Skywalker.
A blessing and curse all at once, considering that this probably meant that Luke was running out of allies down below.

The atmosphere on the planet wasn’t much better. Death permeated the air around the library, bleeding into the Force sluggishly and blending with a potent fear. A heady mixture for a Sith. He drew on that fear, letting it feed into the Dark Side as he and the strike team he had assembled entered the library. He did not intend to take any chances. One way or another, Luke was leaving with him.

Tars met him halfway into the foyer, and he was pleased to see that the retired clone had lost none of his military bearing as he snapped a sharp salute. But his hand was shaking a little, and he bore the same haunted look he and his comrades had when they’d finally been rescued from Umbara. Behind him a great crowd of patrons -- likely everyone who had been on the eight main floors of the building -- huddled in shocked silence, broken only by occasional frightened murmurs.

They weren’t afraid of him. That was unusual in and of itself. Many of the patrons cast glances periodically at a small group near the turbolift that stood or sat in a small circle around what appeared to be a corpse clumsily covered in jackets. Several of them were dotted with blood.

Ignoring Tars’s greeting, Vader stretched out with the Force, sending the Dark Side out ahead of him to seek his son among the floors and patrons He was somewhere below, on a lower floor, and he was terrified of something.

“What happened here?” Vader demanded, interrupting Tars’s explanation of how Luke had come to the library.

The former soldier shook his head grimly. “Don’t know for sure, sir. Some kind of animal? A parasite, by the sounds of things. Like the Geonosian worms, but a lot bigger if the folk by the lift aren’t exaggerating.” He grimaced, then, as if just remembering, held out a slender metal cylinder to him.

“The boy’s lightsaber, sir.”

Vader took it almost absent-mindedly. It was sturdy, simple, yet elegant in its own way. Certainly not the one he’d been wielding on Bespin, though perhaps that one was -- like so many of its predecessors -- beyond recall or repair. How had he managed to complete his first lightsaber in merely four weeks? Or had he been working on it before Cloud City? Inexplicably, Vader felt a small, but keen, stab of disappointment and wondered why. Perhaps the idea of Luke building his first lightsaber alone and without help? Had the treachery of the Jedi not separated the two, he would surely have constructed his first blade under the tutelage of his father.

It was a pity that he had no time to examine the saber more closely. Vader hastily clipped his son’s lightsaber to his belt and turned back to Tars and the woman who had come up beside him to clutch his hand. His wife, perhaps? The Sith fought back an unpleasant and distracting emotion to return to the matter at hand.

“Where is the boy, Tars?” he snapped.

“Down below, nonfiction or reference,” the woman spoke. “Said he was going to warn the patrons downstairs about the...the...thing.” She shuddered.

“There aren’t any other exits down there,” Tars nodded. “If he’s alive, he’s downstairs and-” he cut himself off and everything about his face tightened. Barely-controlled emotions threatened to break through as he kept his voice level with a colossal effort. “And our daughter is down there with him, sir.”

Under normal circ*mstances, Darth Vader would have disregarded this latter statement altogether. The girl was irrelevant, and no concern of his. But if she was with Luke, that changed things slightly, if only because it meant they were in equal amounts of danger. Without meaning to, he dipped his helmet a fraction and murmured, “I understand.”

Then, irritated at the slip and for allowing himself a moment of compassion, Vader strode through the crowd, which parted for him like curtains as he made his way to the turbolift. Luke’s end of the bond flared periodically with a claustrophobic kind of fear and disgust. Then, quite suddenly, a little curl of light reached up, searching. The shadows darted out from around Vader and snatched at the tendril of the Force, but it hastily retracted. But not quickly enough to hide the fact that Luke had been looking for something and was now quite aware that his father had arrived. The barrier went back up on their bond, to Vader’s frustration. The specific sense of where he was vanished. The overwhelming sense of danger did not.

Luke! He all but shouted at the boy’s mind. He got a faint impression of panic and being overwhelmed, then decided that it might not be prudent to split the boy’s focus just yet if he was in combat at all.

Remain where you are, I am coming.

There, that would either drive him further into a panic, or else-
He cut the thought off. Why would anything he said reassure Luke? The boy had made his feelings regarding Vader quite clear at this point.
As if to prove him wrong -- the Force was being a touch contrary -- the smallest trickle of relief slid into the Force between them. It was still tainted with fear -- fear of him, no less -- but it was most certainly relief.

Well, that would do for a start.

When the lift door slid open, he very nearly stepped on the mutilated corpse of a Gran. He’d been impaled by something, and some sort of projectile had punched through his head. Vader decided to ignore the fact that pieces were missing and stepped over the body. He sensed death all around him, with one wavering, dying signature somewhere to his far right.

Further ahead were four stronger life signs. Luke stood out in all the fear and death like a beacon of light, though tinted at the edges with the emotions swirling through the atmosphere. The second signature projecting emotions was likely the girl, Tars’s daughter. The other two….
Vader couldn’t get a read on the other two. They felt like animals, and yet not quite. He had the uncomfortable sense, as he stepped through puddles of blood and discarded tissue, feet making unpleasant squelching noises, that he had encountered something similar once. His boots connected with an arm, and he kicked it out of the way, not bothering to look down at the pair of bodies he passed. His suspicion grew stronger when he exited the stacks and saw highlighted in the bloody glow of the lights a thoroughly ghastly creature.

The end of its long head was rounded, more perpendicular to its body and not quite the razor-sharp crest he recalled, but the long, spare exoskeleton was the same. As was the inner jaw protruding to hiss at him as he approached. Memories of clones screaming, of a derelict research lab on the edges of Wild Space assaulted him and were quickly pushed back.

If this was what was responsible for the dead bodies, he was no longer surprised at any of the emotions filling the library. And Skywalker was down here completely unarmed! He sensed the boy on the other side of a door marked Employees Only. A fair hiding place if one was avoiding these creatures, but not for long.

Intending to finish things quickly, Vader ignited his lightsaber and marched forward. As if entranced by either the light or the humming of the blade, the skeletal creature reached out towards the lightsaber and lost three talons for its trouble. With an agonized screech, and a powerful leap, the monster hopped back up to the tops of the shelves and scrambled up into a vent with a clatter.

The Force hissed in gleeful anticipation -- though whether it was the Dark Side or not he could not readily identify -- and before he had time to shift his stance the door flew open and out came his son.
*******

The stacks seemed even more claustrophobic than before, and Luke almost wondered whether it was because of Darth Vader's stifling, overbearing presence in the Force. Almost wondered, but didn't have the time to. The Thing made another hideous screech -- the first sound beyond hisses and snarls they'd heard so far -- and dropped down out of the vent quicker than Luke had known it could move. There was an instant's warning in the Force, and without thinking he shifted to the side as the lethally sharp tail whipped out between him and Aeshpe.

The girl screamed, and it dimly occurred to Luke that at this point there wasn't much use keeping silent if the predator already knew where the prey was. Vader had not moved from the guarded stance he had been in when the door opened, and if Luke had expended any extra effort at all, he might've sensed outright confusion from the Sith lord. He wasn't moving forward to attack, but neither did he seem like he was going to drop the lightsaber anytime soon.

Luke still had a great many mixed emotions concerning the revelation at Bespin and the nightmares and questions that had followed. On the one hand, it ran so counter to everything he'd been told his entire life -- and how much did he know about himself if it was all lies? Who was he even? -- yet on the other hand the Force had been inescapably, mercilessly clear about the veracity of Vader's claim. Even today, repeatedly, it had been drawing his mind back to the problem.
As if his instinctive response to the man's telepathic contact wasn't troubling enough.
Luke had serious doubts about the wisdom of his next course of action, but despite the fact that most people did not survive telling the dark lord "no", Vader seemed to want him slightly less dead than this creature did.

Besides, he and Aeshpe were unarmed, and he couldn’t afford to only think about himself at the moment. It was mostly sensible. Sort of.

Luke grabbed the librarian's hand and towed her along behind him, throwing them both out of the way of the monster's grasping claws and skidding on floors sticky with both the viscous substance the thing seemed to drip and the dried blood of its earlier victims (and some more recent) until he'd dragged them both behind Vader's considerable bulk.
There were probably a couple different ironies in his choice of shelter, but Luke was in no mood to consider them at the moment.

Surprisingly, Vader did not comment. Instead, he raised his lightsaber into a defensive position and slid a half-step back so that Luke stood just behind his right shoulder, and Aeshpe behind his left. Odd. He’d chosen a protective stance rather than attacking the monster. Distracted though he was, Luke couldn’t help wondering what that might mean.

"Luke-- rebel guy-- whoever you are," Aeshpe hissed to Luke as the strange being stalked out through the open door, "You knew Lord Vader was here without seeing. Do it again."

"What?" he blinked.

"Are my parents alright?" Aeshpe's fingers curled into his jacket sleeve tight enough to leave imprints in the skin beneath, a desperate question just under her words. "Are they safe?"

Luke winced, but didn't try to pry her hand off. It seemed like a bad idea to take his attention off of Vader and the whatever-it-was, but he supposed he couldn't deny the poor librarian this. He closed his eyes and reached for the Force -- temporarily taken aback by the roaring, crackling bonfire of Shadow that surrounded everything, but especially him. Bits of it snaked off towards the monster, but a great deal of the dark presence hovered over him like a stormcloud or like dragon's wings. Luke swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and fought to focus until he'd managed to find the light.

The creature stepped forward and so did Vader, brandishing his sword, and Luke nearly lost his concentration when he lunged -- scoring the creature’s torso and burning it badly -- but he regained his focus at the last moment. When his eyes fluttered open, he realized they'd only been shut a few seconds.

"They're okay," he whispered to Aeshpe, "They're worried."

Aeshpe set her jaw. "Then I need to go to them. Can we get away? My dad needs to know I’m alive. I don’t want him to have another flashback." She glanced at Vader. The man could obviously hold his own against the monster. Doubtless he would kill it, and equally certain was the fact that these sounds would draw in the other creature, leaving the path to the turbolift free.

But could they both get away? If not, could she actually leave the Rebel with Darth Vader? Surely that wouldn’t end well for him. Although, if he was destined for execution, Vader would’ve let the monster kill them, wouldn’t he? She was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and very confused. She didn’t know the right answers anymore.

"I don’t know if I can outrun all of them, but I can give you time,” Luke whispered, making a split-second decision after a glance at Vader -- who was listening intently, he knew. “Do what you have to do." He took several steps back alongside the young woman.
"And I'm sorry I dragged your family into this mess. Honest, And….I...I’m truly sorry about Qeward." He offered her a sad smile that did not seem to belong on his face and squeezed her hand once. “Okay, ready? I’ll cover you. Go.”

"Okay. Okay, I’m ready.” she took a deep breath. “And, Luke? I...I believe you," said Aeshpe, though her eyes were still full of fear and conflict. She tensed, silently prayed that the other creature would be more interested in the battle than in her, then ran. She ran for all she was worth to the turbolift. Something shifted in the shadows to her left, but she slammed her hand down on the button and dove into the lift the second the door was open. It wasn’t going to get her. Not today.

There was an angry clicking sound when the turbolift door opened, but Luke didn't have time to contemplate that. He thrust out a hand and pushed, and something hit the wall before it had the chance to get close to Aeshpe. He felt a little surge of triumph as the lift shot upwards. At least one of them would survive this.

His moment of triumph was curtailed quickly. The first creature had received another wound from the lightsaber, and it was furious. The barbed end of its tail still twitched slightly on the crimson pourcrete, and it screeched, pulling back from Vader. The buzzing-light was not to be trifled with, it had learned.
The monster made an impressive leap over Vader’s head, jaws dripping. Clearly, this prey was too tough. But the smaller one was still defenseless. It made for a considerably easier target.

Luke dodged the swirl and snap of Vader’s cloak several times as the Sith pivoted on one heel almost too quickly to be seen as he checked and countered the monster’s advances. Its hunger and malice made a decent showing against his f- against Vader's Force signature, and Luke scrambled back, trying to get out of the way. He was doing his best not to think about anything but surviving at present, and considering the implications of accepting the truth wasn't helping him now.

"Do not lower your defenses!" The rumbling baritone was sharper than he remembered it being on Bespin, more a reprimand than intended to intimidate. And that was nearly more distracting than anything else.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Of all the ways the misadventure could have gone, Luke had never even slightly considered the idea that he might end up fighting an enraged monster back to back with Darth Vader himself.
Luke grimaced and rolled out of the way of a stab from the inner jaw. Quite frankly, Luke was of the opinion that no creature had any business being able to stab someone with its mouth. That included Fexian Skull-borers, which had now been demoted to second most horrible animal he’d encountered on his own. He popped back up in an instant and gritted his teeth. This would be a lot easier if he was armed. He would have to make do with the Force -- and Yoda would probably kill him for thinking of it like that. Focus, Luke. Come on, you’re not making this any easier for yourself.

Reaching out, Luke gripped the shelf behind the creature and pulled. His concentration was divided, and so he didn’t manage to pull it down on the Thing like he’d intended, but he did send an entire row of datapads slamming into its back. It whirled, slashing at the missiles and actually hitting several, then lashed out with its mutilated tail. There was no barb to impale with now, but as it caught Luke across the chest he was pretty sure he felt at least one rib crack. His reaction time was off: he was slowing down, getting sloppy. He was feeling the effects of his overall sleeplessness the last few days, though he wouldn’t identify it as such yet. The boy landed hard, knocking the wind out of him, in a stack of fallen datapads with the creature looming over him, claws splayed.

Vader tossed his lightsaber then -- and Luke couldn't help a surge of terror, phantom pain shooting up his arm and breath catching in his throat -- and it sheared through several of the long spines on the creature's back. It shrieked and wheeled around to face the Sith, who didn't give it much time to assess the situation.

The being was surprisingly quick. It dodged four strikes in succession almost as though it had sensed them coming. The battle seemed a little more even now -- not necessarily a good thing in this instance -- as the monster hopped and weaved around Vader’s strikes just as Luke had avoided its attacks only moments ago. Luke scrambled to his feet and backed up a few steps, just to get out of range of the tail.

He knew that he had a halfway decent opportunity to escape then and there. Sith Lord and parasitic death machine alike were distracted -- by each other, no less -- and if he could just get upstairs he'd be able to retrieve his --
Luke caught a glimpse of another hilt hanging from Vader's belt and his heart sank. Never mind, his lightsaber was already down here, though it might as well have been a thousand miles away.

He'd worked so hard to build the lightsaber in such a short time, and he couldn't very well just leave it behind. Well, he could, and he would if he had to, but he didn't want to. It was his. Not his father’s -- Luke stubbornly refused to let that trail of thought go any further -- not his teacher’s, not a symbol of some heavy legacy. His.

Luke realized approximately ten seconds later that he'd wasted his opportunity to run. The monster slid around Vader in an absurdly graceful motion and made a dash for him again. Without the Force, Luke would have undoubtedly met a messy end as it aimed for his throat. What few remaining claws it had caught on the edge of his jacket as he twisted and ducked to evade it, and he felt the material tear. Luke jumped out of the way and felt his back smack against a data column. His hand flew up almost of its own accord to catch the inner jaw as it struck, and he had the presence of mind to be thankful that he’d used his prosthetic, which was made of considerably stronger stuff than his flesh hand. Chest heaving, he tried -- not hard enough -- to stave off panic as his other hand found the dripping outer jaw and tried to force it back. Thirty minutes ago this might not have been such a problem, but now he could feel the muscles in his arms trembling. Nonononononononono-

Then the lightsaber hummed and a point of light appeared in the center of the creature’s carapace. It grew larger and brighter and then the tip of a lightsaber was moving up through the chest to split the Thing's head. The blade caught on the skull plate, being a material evidently too hard for lightsabers, but it was already dead by that point. Luke gasped for air his lungs couldn’t quite seem to gather as the monster slowly collapsed, with a stench like heated acid wafting out of its corpse.

Luke stumbled back, wobbling unsteadily on legs that could barely hold him up anymore, and turned to run.

"Do not move," Vader snapped, turning towards him so quickly that his cape flared out behind him.

Luke flinched and took as couple steps back anyway, turning his head this way and that and looking frantically for the other creature. He knew it was probably still in the reference area with them, possibly even headed their way, and he didn’t want to run into it while escaping. Then he heard the hiss.

Before he could react, a heavy hand clamped down on his forearm and yanked him forward so quickly that he collided with Vader's chest with an audible thud. Seconds later, the second creature dropped from the top of one of the stacks to land where Luke had just been. It was still a bit smaller than the first, and had no spines along its back. But then, its host had been considerably shorter than the Ithorian, so perhaps it simply hadn’t had as much room to grow? Not that Luke really wanted to give any thought at all to how their life cycles worked..

Darth Vader stared at the thing, disgust quite evident mask notwithstanding, and ignited his saber once more. The remaining creature made a long, staccato hiss interspersed with a snarl and tried to make itself look bigger, as though it felt threatened. Luke glanced at the glossy black chitin covering the dead one, then at Vader's armor and wondered whether the animal -- provided it was an animal, though the alternative was too frightening to consider -- was responding as though Vader was a member of its species.

Something crunched in the darkness several yards away and Luke stiffened. Another life sign he hadn’t thought to monitor had just gone out, and he hadn’t realized it until he’d felt the gap where Zalbeth’s presence ought to have been. In its place was something else now. How many of these things were there? Was it some kind of bioweapon outbreak, these parasite things, or were the members of that expedition the only ones infected? Luke shifted and tried to step away to try to peer into the darkness. He was pulled close again for his trouble. Vader's arm circled his shoulders tightly enough to make movement of any kind difficult.

"Let me go!" Luke squirmed, exhausted but indignant despite it all.
The mask tilted down a moment to regard him with an air of irritation, then Vader adjusted his grip so that now he had an arm across the boy’s chest. This made it considerably more difficult for Luke to move.
Was Vader insane? Or was he just that obsessed with keeping him from escaping? Neither answer boded well for him.
“Look, that thing is going to attack us! You can't fight one-handed!" Luke protested.

The second creature gathered itself to pounce and three things happened at once. First, Vader pivoted left, swinging Luke out of reach of the Thing. Then, as Luke had been afraid it might, the Thing minutely adjusted its angle and sprang at him. But Vader used the momentum of his turn to swing down with his right hand. Without protective spines, the creature’s back offered considerably less resistance to the lightsaber, and it hit the ground in two pieces.
Luke blinked.
"...okay, maybe you can," he muttered, eyes wide.

"We are leaving," Vader said firmly, and began moving forward, half dragging and half shoving Luke along in a very awkward gait.

Luke couldn't argue with the sentiment, though he would've far preferred doing so on his own terms. This was not ideal by any definition.
This was also the closest he’d ever been to Darth Vader and now that the most immediate threat had passed, he was trying very hard to stave off sheer panic. He needed a clear head if he was going to escape.
Ah yes, escape. While you’re sleep-deprived, shaken up, and running on adrenaline and bad ideas. While a Sith lord is all but carrying you under one arm. Brilliant as usual, Skywalker.

Luke tilted his head, listening for the scuttling, slithering noises that seemed to accompany the newly hatched organisms, then stumbled when his stride did not match his captor's. For just a moment, Vader slowed until Luke had gotten his feet under him again, then he resumed his previous pace.

"No, wait-" he attempted to twist out of the durasteel grip -- a near futile endeavor -- to look around. He could sense the new parasite-thing not far away. If it got the chance to molt, there’d be another of the deadly organisms stalking the library. With a herculean effort, Luke pushed Vader’s arm away just enough to slip under it, though before he even had a chance to take a step he was caught by the shoulder and pulled back to face Vader. He would have struggled more, but the cracked rib was very helpfully reminding him of its presence with small spasms of pain if he moved the wrong way.

"Enough, Luke," the hand on his arm tightened. "If you are waiting for me to become distracted so that you can escape again you will be disappointed." There was something both grim and the slightest bit...fond... under his words as he added, "You have run long enough, my son."

Luke felt his stomach drop and he stilled. He had heard those words before.
Had the dream been a warning?

Taking advantage of Luke’s stunned silence, Vader moved on, towing Luke along with him. Jarred into action again, Luke attempted to dig in his heels and brace his feet, even knowing it wouldn’t be much use. He just needed to slow Vader down, just for a moment. He could feel the Sith’s temper growing shorter. He clenched his teeth against the sharp pain in his side and cast about for an explanation before the man lost his patience altogether.

"There's still one down here!" Luke whispered urgently. He tried to pry the hand off his shoulder, but that worked about as well as his previous attempt. "If you let it molt, it'll kill everyone who comes down here! They're innocent, you have to-!"

Well. He didn't have to do anything. He was Darth Vader, second in command to the emperor. He'd burned cities, killed thousands. What would a few librarians and patrons be to him? What was one rebellious offspring’s request to him, for that matter? Luke bit his lip hard at the thought of having been the cause of Aeshpe, Tars, and Heloise's deaths. And considering how difficult it had been for a fully-trained Sith with a lightsaber to kill just one, he knew that even with blasters the patrons upstairs would die. Yet Vader certainly didn't seem interested in stopping, nor did Luke have the power to make him stop.
Desperation and despair began to prod at his mind in stereo and he pushed at Vader’s arm one more time.

"Father, please!"

Luke froze.
The word had slipped out unbidden, and far too easily, just like it had on the Falcon. There was no way to take it back now that it hung in the air between them. Vader’s grip on his shoulder loosened suddenly as he pulled up short. The helmet snapped down and Luke got the distinct impression that Vader was staring at him. Whatever he was thinking or feeling, it was tightly walled up behind mental shields, leaving him an inscrutable, unsettling blank. Luke swallowed hard, wondering if he'd just condemned himself in some way.

After a silence that stretched for far too long, Vader released him. "Very well," he took a step back, and raised a hand to point at Luke. "Remain where I can see you. If you attempt to run, I will not be pleased."

Luke was too startled by the capitulation to do otherwise. He pushed sweaty hair back off of his forehead and tried not to wince as Vad- his fa- whoever he was ignited his lightsaber and moved into the shadows.
There wasn’t much point in denying it anymore, was there? He’d just called the man father to his face, and he doubted Vader would let him forget it. Unless he had changed his mind about the offer on Bespin and was no longer interested in being linked to a Rebel Jedi? Luke flinched when he heard the last remaining creature's death squeals and tried not to glance around him too much. He looked down at his boots and fought down a wave of nausea when he realized just how much blood and tissue was covering the toes. Most of it was dried, dulling his normally well-polished boots to a rusty brown. Some from Ras, some from the Arkudan man, and a great deal from other patrons he’d warned but refused to leave. Luke tried not to feel guilty about that. He had warned them, after all.
His toes curled tightly inside his boots as he realized that at the end of this day, the odds of him getting home to the Alliance and Leia were very, very unlikely. The motion caused some of the skin -- or whatever it was -- to move oddly on the boots, causing him to examine it closer.

The tissue looked like it had come from the creatures, burned but still gleaming. Luke reached down to brush it away, as disgusting as the thought of touching it was, and quickly pulled his hand away. It burned! Was the underside of the skin made of something caustic? He barely noticed -- a difficult feat -- when Vader returned.

“Luke.”

Luke twitched, but stubbornly kept his attention on the mystery of the caustic exoskeleton pieces.

"Where did the parasites come from, Luke?" Vader demanded, stepping closer. It was unlikely that he thought it was some kind of Rebel plot, but Luke sensed he was suspicious of his son’s involvement somehow.

"From the patrons," Luke rasped, still staring at his soiled boots, swaying a little on his feet. All his adrenaline was draining away faster than he could keep up with.

"The patrons smuggled them in?"

Luke shook his head numbly. "They were growing inside the patrons. I did bring them but- I didn't know, I..." he trailed off, wondering why he felt the need to defend himself to an Imperial of all things. He shuddered and folded his arms across his chest, remembering. "They, um. They come out of the chest."

After a somewhat awkward silence, Vader reached out and tilted his chin up carefully so that Luke couldn't help looking straight into the mask. "Were you harmed?" his father asked in an astonishingly gentle voice -- gentle compared to every other time he'd spoken to Luke save once, and that was at Bespin.

Luke wrinkled his brow at the unexpected question, and the thoroughly absurd day he was having. All he'd wanted from this wretched trip was a pamphlet on older astromech droids so he could give Artoo a long needed tune-up. Murderous aliens, traumatized librarians, and Darth Vader suddenly acting unexpectedly parental had not been on his to-do list. Belatedly, he realized that Vader was growing agitated and that he hadn't answered the question.

"...I...think I'm okay?" he croaked as best he could with his jaw partway immobilized.

With a grunt that could’ve meant anything from incredulousness to disapproval, Vader -- surprisingly carefully -- prodded at his ribs with the hand that was not still holding his face. Luke yelped and inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. “...forgot about that…” he gasped.

“That appears to be the worst of your injuries,” Vader allowed grudgingly.

Vader's relief was tangible for the few seconds before he locked his emotions back behind his shields. Relief? He had been...worried? His thumb brushed across Luke's cheek for a fraction of a second -- and what in the world was he supposed to feel about that? -- and then the hand moved back to his shoulder again.

"Come." Vader said, quieter now, "This is no place to linger."

“But the other members of the expedition-!” Luke let the sentence hang incomplete. Vader wasn’t the sort of man you questioned without consequences, whether stony silence or abruptly finding yourself fatally short of breath.

“There will be an investigation,” Vader answered. It sounded like a warning. “I do not know what expedition you are referring to, but as you have several questions to answer already, I suspect I will know soon enough.”

He sounded calm and assured, but even with his emotions hidden he felt on-edge, as least as much as Luke himself was. They stepped into the turbolift and his shields slipped, just for a few seconds. Luke caught a brief impression of so close, it was so close to him! and decided not to ask.
He wasn't sure the man would answer anyway.

Then it hit him: Vader had not seen them hatch.
"F-" he took a deep breath and gathered his nerve. He’d already said it once, he could do it again.

"Father?"

"Yes, Luke?" Vader asked, glancing down at him.

"H-how did- how did you know they were parasites?" Luke squeaked.

The hand on his shoulder stilled, and the impression of heavy memories drifted around them. Then, "The witnesses to the first death theorized as much."
But there was an evasive quality to the answer, and the Force caught on the words and tugged, whispering to Luke that he wasn’t being told the whole truth.

At least this time he could actually identify when someone was telling him a partial truth. Luke scowled down at his filthy boots and blinked, trying to keep his eyes focused. There was a rustle of cloth that he assumed meant Vader was looking at him again, but he didn’t turn his head.

“Son.”

Luke twitched a little, but cautiously glanced up out of the corner of his eye. As suspected, Vader was watching him. The voice box -- or whatever it was that made him speak like that -- kept his words steady and mostly flat save for moments of strong emotion, but Luke couldn’t help thinking he had heard an undertone of weariness.

“How long has it been since you last slept?” his father asked, surprising him yet again.
This was not the kind of behavior he’d expected to come with being captured. Resisting the urge to rub his eyes -- who knew what kind of residue was left on his hands? -- Luke managed an indifferent shrug. “Full cycle or short dozes?” he asked, then cringed. That was probably a little too informal for a Rebel prisoner.

There was a staticy sound that might’ve been a huff, then Vader clarified, “A full cycle of sleep.” Though the fact that Luke had asked at all probably answered the question.

How long had it been? If falling asleep while finishing the lightsaber didn’t count, that made it- “...Two days? Maybe? I don’t know.”

There was a tension in the lift around them, heavy with hesitancy. Luke sensed that Vader wanted an explanation, but that he had his suspicions and wanted to avoid the topic at the same time. Odd to think of Darth Vader avoiding anything. And Luke wasn’t sure he wanted to admit to having nightmares in front of an enemy -- father or not -- anyway. What if Vader chose to exploit that information?

When the door slid open, Luke stared dully at the lights for a few seconds, a little surprised that the upper floors seemed to be intact. And that all the patrons were staring at him. A light prod to the middle of his back prompted him to stumble out of the turbolift. There were stormtroopers everywhere, and patrons crowding all the spaces they weren’t occupying already. Even if Vader hadn’t been two inches away, Luke doubted he could’ve escaped easily. Vader caught his arm, discreetly steadying him before he tipped right into a display of new holobooks.
Maybe it had been longer than two days after all.

“I have matters to attend to. You will remain here until I have finished,” Vader announced, directing him towards one of the circles of chairs. The patrons who had been using them hastily vacated. “Rest or meditate until I return.”
There was an unspoken warning under his words that escape attempts would not be well received.

Luke sank into a chair and dropped his head into his hands with a groan. He’d known ever since Bespin that there was always a possibility that there would come a day when he wasn’t able to outrun Vader. When his luck ran out. He’d even made a few precautionary recordings stashed with Artoo in case of emergency. But he’d tried his best not to think about it actually happening. Except now it was. And it wasn’t really anything like he’d expected.
One didn’t exactly plan for chest-rupturing parasitic death machines, after all.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

The control room is quiet, a welcome respite from the screaming of the wind in the shaft behind him. But the quiet doesn’t sit well, it feels false and expectant. His own footsteps echo too loudly across the floor panels, heightening his unease. The Force is resonating, a warning and a promise and something almost familiar all at once, but he’s not sure why--

There is a musical hum and a shrill warning in the Force and he barely has time to raise his blade. How does a man that big just disappear so easily? Darth Vader bears down on him, forcing him to retreat back outside onto the gantry, and it is now more evident than ever that this was never a duel, or even a fair fight. The dark lord has been toying with him, testing him, and it seems he is beginning to run out of patience.

High columns rise around him, filled with datapads and tapes, but these do not hide him. Vader stalks around and between the stacks with a predatory grace, hissing through his respirator. This isn’t right, where is his lightsaber? He backs up, stumbles over a body, falls.
He knows this face, the girl staring at him with sightless eyes. The name takes a moment to come to him.

“Aeshpe?”

Then before his eyes, her face becomes Leia’s, and he scrambles back with a cry. This isn’t real, this can’t be real.

And still Darth Vader approaches.

He is small, so very small compared to the stacks rising around him and the dark being who has cornered him. Vader does not move like a human, nor does he even look like one now. His armor shifts, morphs, plasteel into chitin and durasteel into exoskeleton, and he reaches for him with wicked claws.
This is not a man.
This is not his-

“Father!” Luke shot upright, not sure if he’d spoken the word aloud or not.
Either way, he felt Vader’s presence in the Force, like dragon-wings, shoot out and wrap around him from somewhere in the room, too tightly to be comfortable. The grip subsided after a moment, as Luke reoriented himself with his situation.

He was still in the library. He was still on Mygeeto.
And he was still a prisoner of the Empire.

Luke held no illusions about the possibility of escape. He wasn’t going anywhere with this many stormtroopers in the room and no lightsaber, not to mention Darth Vader in close proximity. And although the dark lord in question had been decidedly less hostile than was traditional for captors, Luke still had no guarantee that he would not at least be interrogated. He had the presence of mind to be grateful that he wasn’t high enough clearance to be given any details on Operation Yellow Moon.
Whatever that was, it needed to stay under wraps, for Leia’s sake.

“Hey.”

Luke looked up, remembering at the last second not to rub his bleary eyes. He wasn’t taking any chances with weird alien germs. Rogue Squadron and the Three Week Pink-Eye Adventure was warning enough.
Aeshpe stood over him, an oversized coat wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket. Rattling in her hand was a teacup full of something smelling of spices he couldn’t identify, sloshing over the sides.

“Hey,” he croaked back, “You made it up okay.”

“Thanks to you,” Aeshpe sat down in the chair beside him with a forced, nervous grin. Luke knew the look all too well: it was the I’m okay, please don't ask smile. “Here. Mom thought we all needed some tea.”
As Luke took it with a mumbled thank-you, she examined him closely. “How in the ‘verse did you manage to fall asleep after all that?” she whispered, half to herself.

The tea was warm, but not hot, tasting slightly of bitter citrus, and Luke was pleasantly surprised by how it soothed his nausea. “Well,” he cleared his throat and shrugged. “I’ve been running on caf, adrenaline, and stubbornness for the last...fifty-four hours? Give or take? So there’s that.”

“That was not wise, Skywalker.”

Aeshpe flinched violently and Luke yelped and ducked on instinct, before turning to find Vader standing behind the chair, hands hooked over his belt. Well, that explained why his Force signature had felt so stiflingly close. He must really have been out of it if he hadn’t even heard the breathing.

“Well,” he managed, once his heart started beating again, “No. Obviously not.”

For just a moment, he thought his father might’ve been about to say something, but then Vader turned and walked away quickly, back to where an officer was approaching with a datapad. Luke turned back to lean against the seat again and clutched the teacup, letting out a long breath.

“Okay, tell me honestly, how long was he standing there?” he groaned.

“Since about the middle of your nightmare, when you were mumbling,” Aeshpe said, letting out a relieved breath. “My dad wouldn’t let me come over here until you’d woken up...I probably wouldn’t have come over at all if Mom hadn’t insisted though. No offense.”

“Oh.” Luke made a face. “Hooray for me.”

Aeshpe smiled a little at that -- a more genuine smile this time -- but it didn’t last. “What happens now?” she asked softly, looking around.

The patrons were being rounded up in groups of four or five to be questioned and led into side rooms. They would come back out after ten or fifteen minutes, looking as pale and shaken as before. Luke was surprised. He’d figured Vader might’ve come to collect him and then leave the library to deal with the fallout. This seemed more like he was actually trying to get an explanation for the incident.

“I don’t know. I guess they figure out where the creatures came from so they can make sure it doesn’t happen again, then….then I guess I leave with Vader.” And never see my friends again, he added silently and morosely.

“I’m sorry.” Aeshpe pulled the jacket a little tighter around her shoulders. “When he didn’t kill you down in reference I thought...well, I hoped you wouldn’t have to-” She shrugged helplessly. “Even if you are a rebel, you seem like a nice guy.”

Luke almost laughed at that, a hysterical little giggle even though he knew it wasn’t actually funny. He had been living with the assumption that Bespin was the worst, most bizarre day he could have -- miraculously topping the horror of finding his aunt and uncle’s bodies -- but this was quickly shaping up to outdo them all for sheer absurdity.

“Thanks,” he sighed. “I’m sorry too.”

Aeshpe looked down at her hands a moment, then tentatively reached out to touch his shoulder. “Luke? I’m...about before, downstairs, I mean. I was-”

Luke shook his head and took her hand for a moment, releasing it with a half-hearted squeeze. “You were scared out of your mind, just like I was. Am? I don’t know. It’s fine. I just hope I didn’t get your family in trouble for accidentally harboring a member of the Rebel Alliance. The Empire is...ah...kind of strict about that.”

To distract himself, Luke turned his attention to the troopers, and the patrons they were questioning. He sipped the tea and scanned their faces. Fear, some anger, but mostly confusion. They weren’t likely to get answers that way. No, Luke didn’t think they were asking the right questions. Or the right people, perhaps.

That thought stuck, and his brow furrowed. Aeshpe noticed and raised an eyebrow, questioning. “Hey, your dad knew about that expedition thing, right?” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Aeshpe shifted uncomfortably, “Why?”

“Did he know how many people went on it?”

“Just the five. Qeward, Solli, Zalbeth, Tover and Pike,” the girl answered. “Qeward had to fund the trip himself. Not too many people were interested in checking out a landmass that might be a ship.” She frowned. “You think the expedition is connected too, don’t you?”

His legs were still shaking a little, and it took him a moment to stand up, but Luke set the cup down and nodded, wiping his hands on his pants -- not that they were much cleaner. “Yeah. I’ve got a feeling...I don’t know. I think they’re talking to the wrong people.” He glanced down at her. “But I don’t know what will happen if I point out Tover and the other guy.”

“Pike,” Aeshpe supplied. She closed her eyes. “I don’t know either. Probably won't be good, whatever it is. But...but what if they’re infected too? Should we try to catch it before something else happens?”
Her tone had gone from worry to a flat resignation. It sounded too much like Luke had when the Falcon fled Cloud City.
Not exactly a reminder he’d wanted, considering who was across the room and very very aware of everything he was doing.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, turning someone in like this, but for the sake of answers and the safety of the rest of the patrons, what choice did they have? The two survivors exchanged a grim look, acknowledging the choice they were making, and Luke left the safety of the circle of chairs. Security officers from the local garrison were being briefed in a corner with a few Imperials who must’ve come down from the Executor and Darth Vader.
He wasn’t exactly hard to pick out of a crowd.

Luke quickly discovered that it was one thing to be found by Vader while in the middle of a life-or-death situation. Actually walking up to him when not in danger was something else entirely. Instinct was telling him to run, little thrills of panic were shooting through his chest, but he forced himself to keep moving until he stood about a pace away from him, just to his right.

“Commander Skywalker. What is it?” Darth Vader sounded a trifle impatient -- which was never a good sign -- but Luke didn’t miss the clear invitation in the way he shifted to the left slightly, making room for him in the small knot of troopers, officers, and security officials.
Alright, I guess we’re keeping our...connection...under wraps for now? Fair enough. I don’t really want to know how these guys would react either. Luke studiously ignored the tiny corner of his mind that actually felt a little conflicted about that.

Could he actually do this? Moving into the circle to stand beside Vader -- literally or figuratively -- felt like walking into a krayt’s den while the krayt was still home. Taking a deep breath and doing his best to release his fear into the Force, Luke slid forward a step. Suddenly unsure of himself, he jammed his hands into the pockets of his ruined jacket, just to give them something to do, and swallowed hard. Vader shifted again, closing what little gap there was between them, and the one or two Imperials who had looked like they were about to object quickly shut their mouths.

Stay calm, Skywalker. You can do this. You’re a commander, remember? Different army here, but your rank hasn’t changed. This is about protecting the patrons. Just go for it.

Projecting all the calm he did not have, Luke folded his arms over his chest and frowned sharply at the officers. “You’re not asking the right patrons the right questions.” He spoke quickly, wasting as few words as possible.
“At least ten people are dead: three as a result of the parasite hatching, seven as a result of actions directly taken by the grown parasite. You should be looking into the connection between the three original victims.”

As he had guessed, this did not exactly sit well with the Imperials.
“How much do you know about this...incident, Rebel?” one -- a lieutenant, by his rank bars -- asked with more than a little suspicion in his voice.

“More than I ever wanted to know but still not enough to put the pieces together without further evidence,” Luke shot back, tired annoyance overriding some of his composure. “Look, all I can tell you is that you need to question the last two members of the expedition.”

“What expedition, Commander?” Vader demanded. There was an undercurrent of danger in his voice that Luke didn’t want to think too hard about right now.

He had to remind himself to breathe -- and not to flinch every time Vader spoke, which would slightly ruin his calm and collected front -- and straightened his shoulders. “Five beings made an expedition out to some kind of crashed ship that the locals all thought was a hill for the last couple decades. I honestly don’t know how you could make that sort of mistake, but there it is. I encountered all five on their way back to the city and brought them the rest of the way to the library when their speeder experienced malfunctions-”

“Then this is your doing!” the lieutenant interrupted.
Before Luke could open his mouth to defend himself, the man made a choked gasp and reached for his throat for nearly thirty seconds before his breathing returned to normal and he gasped for air.

Luke glanced discreetly up at Vader, wanting to question what he had obviously just done and why, but not quite brave enough to try it, then did his best to continue as if nothing had happened.
“Three of the members of the expedition died within the next two hours as a result of the organism emerging from their chests. You can have a look at the bodies if you want more detail.”
This was slightly more spite than actual invitation, and he felt a little guilty about saying it right on the heels of someone nearly getting asphyxiated, but they certainly clammed up after that.

“Why just the three? Were the other two simply immune?” one of the local security officers mused.

“And why didn’t they say something about the parasites before? Yes, that’s what we need to find out,” Luke nodded to the man, as if he were back briefing Rogue Squadron with the Fleet. Not that anyone could’ve mistaken this dour pack of armored soldiers for Rogue Squadron, but for half a moment he could almost forget he was surrounded by Imperials.
“Pike never left the lobby, but Tover witnessed the first death. Start with him.”

“Yes sir!” the officer responded on reflex, then blanched and glanced up at Vader. “Er, I mean-”

“The commander’s suggestion is sound,” Vader nodded once. “Locate the men in question.”

There was an air of pleased satisfaction for just a moment around them, gone as quickly as it had come. Luke had an idea of who it came from, but decided that was one enigma too many for the day and that he wasn’t going to pursue that line of questioning.

The soldiers dispersed to seek out Pike and Tover, leaving Luke alone with Vader once more. Luke caught Aeshpe sending him a worried, sympathetic look from across the room before Tars blocked his view, bustling over to hover over her.
Well that makes two of us, Luke found himself thinking, barely catching a wry grin before it made it to his lips.

“You handled yourself well,” Vader commented unexpectedly.

Luke stared for a few seconds and wondered what the appropriate response was meant to be. “I...ah….th-thanks?” he stammered.

Where was this coming from? How had they gone from the “join us or die” attitude in Cloud City -- with accompanying limb removal -- to him behaving, well-
About like you always sort of imagined a father would, actually. Luke wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Why the sudden change? Or had Vader taken Luke’s acceptance (however reluctant) of their relationship as a form of surrender? Was he acting as though Luke had joined him? Was this some kind of plot to manipulate him into cooperating?

“Not everything is a trap, my son.” The man in question sounded equally exasperated and amused. “There is no need for you to parse everything I say for sinister hidden meanings.”

“No, you’re pretty sinister on your own without hiding it,” Luke said without thinking. Immediately after, his eyes widened and he tensed. Oh kriff. Shouldn’t have said that.

Vader regarded him silently, just long enough for Luke to contemplate running, then he announced sharply, “You are impudent.”

And Luke thought of the old veterans in the Alliance -- all too few of those -- and folk he’d run across in his travels, and all the things they’d said when they’d heard his last name. Summoning up a little more nerve, he rather meekly said, “I’ve been told I got that from my father.”

For a moment he thought he’d said the wrong thing, feeling a spike of displeasure in the Force, but then Vader grudgingly admitted, “That is not...entirely inaccurate.”

For some reason, that felt like a victory to Luke. But before he could ask for an explanation -- or decide if he wanted to ask -- his father took his lightsaber off his belt and held it up, examining it. Luke wanted to snatch it out of his hand, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well. And considering how strong the Sith’s grip was, he really wasn’t sure it was even physically possible.
He shifted restlessly on his feet and tried not to display any outward signs of uneasiness. He didn’t really want to admit to himself that he’d been...well, not comfortable, but certainly not as afraid as he’d been on Bespin. Which, considering their very disparate political alliances -- to say nothing of the particular disciplines of the Force they espoused -- was probably not right. But seeing Vader holding his lightsaber, or any lightsaber really, was a sudden and stark reminder of how dangerous the man was.

And how much danger Luke was probably still in.

Somehow, he managed not to move a muscle when the saber ignited with a snap-hiss that was almost lost in the sound of the crowd. Luke did, however, notice that the crowd was now giving them an even wider berth than before, and nearly all of the ones not engaged in other activities were avoiding looking at them. They probably think I’m about to die, Luke realized.

“This is very well balanced.”

And there Vader went, saying and doing utterly unexpected things again.
He turned the blade back and forth slowly, holding it up, then switched it off again.

“The design is simple, but durable. Did you begin constructing it before our...confrontation?”

He seemed as reluctant to discuss Bespin as Luke was. Luke supposed it was probably too much to hope that he might feel some shade of remorse about cutting his own son’s hand off and immediately trying to recruit him afterwards, but at least he found it as awkward as he did.

“I didn’t think I’d need another lightsaber before our...confrontation,” Luke answered. Don’t ask to see the hand, don’t ask to see the hand, don’t ask to see the-

Vader’s helmet tipped ever so slightly so that the hollow gaze rested on Luke’s crossed arms, the prosthetic hand being the more visible one.

Ah dangit.

The Sith took hold of Luke’s wrist, examining it. Luke decided he was better off just letting it happen for now, but anxiety was beginning to coil in his stomach.

“I was not aware that the Rebels had access to high quality prosthetics.” Was it his imagination, or did his father sound almost...envious? Certainly, he sounded slightly impressed, which Luke supposed was good news as far as the hand was concerned.

Unless he’s planning to chop this one off too.

Vader released his arm as if he had been burned, and stepped back a half pace. Luke swallowed hard and crossed his arms over his chest again. Had he remembered to shield his thoughts? He wasn’t sure. That was definitely something he was going to watch out for until he got a chance to escape. Yeah right. That’s...that’s not happening, Skywalker.

Across the room, Aeshpe watched the two in a detached sort of manner. When Darth Vader had raised the lightsaber, she had been certain she was about to witness an execution, but she couldn’t make herself look away. When Vader switched the saber off again, she was confused. When he held up Luke’s wrist as though he were examining it, Aeshpe was certain she was seeing things.
He wasn’t killing Luke, even though it was pretty obvious that Luke was a Rebel, and quite possibly a Jedi as well.
He wasn’t handling him the way Imperials usually handled prisoners.
Luke wasn’t even in binders!

Something was up.

She just wasn’t sure she had the mental energy to contemplate it yet.

Aeshpe glanced up at her father, who was pacing and muttering under his breath about setting up perimeters and watches. Was this what it had been like for him during the Clone Wars? Because this was horrible.

“Dad?” she whispered.

Tars flashed a tight smile at her. “We’re gonna be okay, ad’ika. We’re fine. Lord Vader’s gonna get to the bottom of this, he always does.”

As far as Aeshpe knew, her father had never served with the 501st, or on Coruscant. Did that mean Vader had fought in the Clone Wars too, or was her father just guessing what he’d do?
“Did they talk to Pike and Tover yet?” she asked quietly.

Tars stopped pacing abruptly, an odd look on his face. “Well I saw that snot-nosed little lieutenant headed for Tover over in the corner,” he said slowly, “But Pike…”
His eyes hardened. “Wait here, Aeshpe. If you see your mother, stay together. I need to talk to someone.”

Given the press of bodies milling about, it would take him a minute to reach the other side of the lobby. He didn’t catch any of the conversation taking place in the little alcove.

Slightly out of the way of the crowd, Darth Vader was still studying his son’s lightsaber.
“That you constructed this in only four weeks with the limited training you have is...remarkable. Indeed you are powerful, as the emperor has foreseen.” he mused.

There was a touch of something sardonic in the way he mentioned the emperor. Perhaps he had been genuine when he’d spoken of overthrowing the man back in Cloud City?

Luke wondered if a fully-trained Jedi could construct a lightsaber faster. The journal certainly seemed to hint at it. He’d been happy to finish in four weeks, but had thought he could’ve done better. Having his progress referred to as remarkable, especially by someone exceedingly proficient with a blade -- enemy or not -- was a bit surprising. He ducked his head, unwilling to let his slightly embarrassed flush show.

Vader returned the hilt to his belt and Luke fought down a stab of disappointment. Oh come on, he told himself sternly, You didn’t think he was actually going to give it back, did you? You’re a prisoner, remember?

“It is not very much like mine,” Vader said, almost more to himself than to Luke. Was he displeased by that? If Luke’s former lightsaber had belonged to his father, that meant it had belonged to Vader, didn’t it? Unless Obi-wan had lied about that, too.

Luke tried not to glance at his hilt and frowned. “I would’ve preferred that design," he admitted reluctantly, "but I didn’t have the saber to study.”
The words were just the slightest bit pointed and perhaps a little bolder than they ought to have been, but Bespin was a sore spot. A literal one, if he were to take the phantom pains into account.

But the other man didn’t feel angry. He felt almost more resigned, and perhaps just a shade irritated.
“No, I suppose you didn’t.” Vader traced a glove over his own lightsaber for a moment, and Luke could almost picture a contemplative frown behind his mask. He seemed to be weighing his thoughts, as if trying to decide whether to continue speaking or not.

“But then, every hilt I’ve ever made in that design has met a terrible fate. I do not know why I expected yours to be any different.”

Luke would later completely deny that this startled a laugh out of him, given the seriousness of the situation. But it was such a human thing to hear Darth Vader say. He highly doubted the dark lord was like this on a regular basis. In fact, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even be like this tomorrow. So what made today different? Was he just in a good (for a Sith lord) mood because he’d finally captured the infamously slippery Skywalker? That was probably the reason, though Luke couldn’t quite suppress a slightly forlorn little voice in the back of his mind engaged in a little wishful thinking and wondering whether his father might simply be pleased that he could build a good lightsaber all by himself.

Mercifully, his introspection was cut short by an ashen-faced Tars, who stopped to salute Vader and waited to be acknowledged before speaking.
“Sir,” he hissed, “My daughter just told me the soldiers are looking for Pike and Tover.”

“What of it?” Vader asked calmly.

Tars grimaced, and Luke began to get a bad feeling.

“Pike left the library right as the storm hit, just before Aeshpe alerted us to the situation downstairs. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but if this is related to the expedition, something’s up.” the retired clone reported.

“Undoubtedly,” Vader growled. “I trust you have security cameras?” When Tars nodded, he made an impatient gesture. “Track his most likely trajectory. I do not wish to have to put this city under quarantine.”

“Yes milord,” Tars saluted again and disappeared into the crowd.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

When the soldiers found Tover, there was a bit of a commotion.
Lieutenant Forien, a razor-thin man with perpetually watering eyes, glowered at the older human and generally made more of a fuss than was necessary.

“Seize the suspect! No one leaves until he talks!” he announced, a little bit theatrically, drawing concerned stares from the patrons. No harm in making an example out of the odd suspect, was there? They’d been too mincing and gentle with the crowd already. They weren’t here to be nannies, they were here to represent their emperor! It was better to remind people not to trifle with the Empire.

Only, it turned out that Tover was considerably stronger than he appeared. He shrugged off the stormtrooper’s hands with little difficulty and matched the lieutenant’s swaggering posture with a scowl of his own. This, predictably, was not well-received. Two stormtroopers roughly restrained him as the lieutenant made a second attempt at an interrogation.

“How long were you planning this attack?” he demanded, striking the man, “Who else was involved in infecting the patrons? Where did the parasites come from? Answer me!”

Across the room, Luke strained to see what was going on -- he was not going to resort to standing on tiptoe to see. Not in front of his father, thank you very much -- and started to take a step in the direction of the very loud “questioning” session. He barely suppressed a huff and a jolt at the same time when Vader’s hand on his shoulder halted his progress quickly. Thus far, Vader had not hurt him, nor had he demonstrated any hint that he might do so in the future, but Luke wasn’t sure if that would change or not. He was still a terrifying figure, but his bizarre behavior, hovering somewhere between possessive and protective, was beginning to strike Luke as less frightening and more exasperating.

“I’m not going to run off and go play in traffic, you know,” he muttered impudently, “You can let go.”

“I can, but I will not,” Vader answered in similar tones, and tugged him back to stand beside him, as if merely to prove that he could.

This time, Luke did not muffle his groan. Vader seemed to be vaguely amused by this.
“I’m guessing your lieutenant over there doesn’t do much field work?” Luke glanced back at the crowd. He couldn’t see, but it sounded as if someone had gotten punched. He hoped it wasn’t Tover, but odds were, it wasn’t a stormtrooper. “Or at least, isn’t put in charge of interrogations much.”

His father said nothing, but neither did he shield his growing irritation. The lieutenant was clearly rattled by the bodies and the way the Rebel commander was just walking around, unbound, and was trying to hang on to his authority any way he could. This so-called interrogation was sloppy and unprofessional, and was, frankly, making them look ridiculous.
The odds of the lieutenant surviving the cycle were dropping by the minute. Vader did not appreciate incompetence.

Evidently, neither did Tars Zim.

“Hey!” the grizzled veteran pushed his way between Tover and Forien. “That’s enough!”

“You would be well advised not to impede an Imperial investigation,” Lieutenant Forien hissed,

Tars knew he was probably on thin ice at the moment, but he’d had a long day and he really wasn’t interested in letting the lieutenant keep up his “bad agent/worse agent” act in the middle of the lobby. All the other interrogations had been professional and even fairly civil to this point. There was no need to escalate.

“You’re not gonna get answers by roughing up my patrons,” he barked, drawing on memories of old drill sergeants, long gone. “I’m taking over.”
Under his breath, but not quite out of earshot, he muttered, “Rank amateur.”

Ignoring Forien’s startled sputtering, Tars crouched in front of Tover and fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, which he offered to the man. Tover took it, casting a disgusted look over Tars’s shoulder at the lieutenant, and dabbed a bit of blood off of his lip.

“Sorry about that, mate,” the librarian said pleasantly. “How about we start over? They’re all in a bit of a panic, not that I blame them, because nobody wants more of those monsters running about. Makes sense, right? Of course it does. Which is why they need as much information about those things and where they came from as you can give them.”

He leaned forward as Tover muttered, “I know, Zim. I know. Can’t say as I like the idea of telling them anything though. Not much to tell anyway.”

Tars nodded. “I understand that. I do, really. But Tover, mate, there’s something you need to remember.” He dropped the friendly tone and his eyes bored into Tover’s.
“My little girl was down there today. With those things. She could have died, Tover. So you don’t need to worry about the Imps. You need to worry about what I’m gonna do if I find out you knew those slimy worms were down there with her.”

Tover paled.

***
Ten minutes passed before Tars, Lieutenant Forien, and the stormtroopers made their way back to Vader and Luke. Tover was still restrained between two of them, looking shaken. The lieutenant and Tars both saluted, which Vader acknowledged with an impatient dip of his helmet. If the men had any questions as to why the Rebel was standing close enough to the Sith to be practically glued to his side, they didn’t say.

“Lord Vader, the prisoner denies knowing that the...creatures...were smuggled into the library, but does have an idea as to where they might’ve come from.” Forien began.

“It was the ship, wasn’t it?” Luke interrupted. “Something happened out there.”
There was a slight pressure on his shoulder, a warning, and he shut his mouth.

Lieutenant Forien started to speak again, but this time Tover interrupted. The flabbergasted look on the Imperial’s thin face almost made Luke laugh, but he kept silent.

“Yeah. It was the ship. There were...growths on the inside, changing the climate. We were studying them, trying to figure out how they survived the crash that brought the ship down.” He shuddered, remembering. “That’s where we found the eggs.”

At Tars’s stern look, he proceeded to explain that Qeward had been reading life signs from the “hill” for weeks, but no one had believed him. He’d put together the expedition, and they had tunneled through the rock and ice to discover the hull of a ship. It had been strangely temperate inside, and the broken decks and walls dripped with an organic slime of some kind.

If they’d let him, Tover would’ve given them the details of the entire structure, which was evidently fairly extensive, and its technical readouts. But Vader cut him off with a sharp gesture that may or may not have applied the slightest pressure to his windpipe.

“Get to the point,” he snarled. Beside him, Luke flinched a little at his tone, or perhaps more at the way he’d unconsciously tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder. Reluctantly, Vader loosened his grasp a little.

Trembling, Tover resumed his narrative. On the party’s third day exploring the ship, they’d discovered a wide, dark chamber filled with what appeared to be large, leathery eggs. Believing they’d discovered some kind of hitherto unknown reptile living on Mygeeto, Qeward, Zalbeth, and Solli had gone in for a closer look while Tover set up a small research station and Pike prepped a medical kit, just in case.
The eggs had “hatched” when touched, releasing crablike creatures that attached themselves to Qeward, Solli, and Zalbeth’s heads. Pike and Tover had barely been able to drag them out of the chamber, fearing that others would hatch.

“Tars, we panicked,” Tover sounded almost like he was pleading, a stark contrast to his earlier defiance. Darth Vader tended to have that sort of effect on people. “We couldn’t pry them off, they were-- they started strangling them every time we tried! And we couldn’t cut them off, their blood is pure acid, strong enough to melt through three layers of the deck!”

Luke started at this, and surreptitiously glanced down at his fingertips. He’d been lucky that the lightsaber cauterized the creature’s wounds if the things in the basem*nt were related to the face-hugging things.

“They were practically catatonic. But after two more days, the crabs just...died,” Tover tried to gesture, only to remember that he was cuffed, and let his arms fall. “They curled up and fell off and died and we thought that was the end of it! Pike said that was the end of it!”

“Now Mr. Tover,” said Lieutenant Forien condescendingly, “Surely you don’t expect us to believe that you witnessed your comrades’ experience and never had them submit to a medical scan?”

“What do you take me for?” Tover growled, regaining a little of his old demeanor, “Of course we scanned them! There was nothing there!” He paused, and wrinkled his brow suddenly. Luke sensed confusion as the man murmured, “Well, no. There were some dark spots in their lungs, but...they said they were fine, and Pike thought they were probably mold spores. We gave them each a shot of an antibiotic and collected the dead creatures for study.”

“I think it’s safe to say they weren’t mold spores,” Forien snorted.

Luke opened his mouth, then quickly looked up at Vader. The man did not react, so he went ahead. “Tover, is Pike a certified medic? What I mean is, did you have any reason to doubt his diagnosis, or did you also assume they were mold spores?”

It was Tars who answered, rather than Tover. “Sorin Pike is a biologist, not a doctor. He’s volunteered at some of the free clinics the library’s hosted during disasters, but he wasn’t certified to my knowledge. He should’ve known a mold spore when he saw it though.”

The security officer from the impromptu briefing earlier hurried up, exuding urgency. Aeshpe and her mother trailed behind with equally perturbed expressions. The officer looked from Forien to Luke to Vader and back again before settling his gaze on Vader. “Milord, we’ve reviewed the security footage.” he squeaked.

“And?” Vader demanded.

“Sorin Pike fled north, and the cameras lost sight of him after he took a public lift to a lower level of the city.”

“Is he going back to the ship?” Tover demanded, “Why in the name of the Albino Cyclops would he go back?!"

“That is precisely what I intend to find out,” Lieutenant Forien snapped. He turned to Vader. “Lord Vader, I request permission to track this Pike to the ship and bring him in for questioning.”

Darth Vader seemed almost as though he were deliberating, and he did not answer right away. In the slightly awkward silence that followed, Tars edged over to stand by his family.

“What are you doing over here?” He whispered to his wife. “I thought I said to stay out of the way of the soldiers!”

“I would’ve!” Heloise retorted, “But you forgot to give them the security password for the surveillance recordings! Didn’t you wonder why it took them so long?”

Tars flushed. “Ah. That’s my fault then, sorry love.” He grimaced and hoped Vader wouldn’t comment on how long it had taken to get the information from the tapes.

“Take seven men, Lieutenant, and apprehend Pike. Any hostile lifeforms encountered are to be eradicated,” Vader said at last.

“I can show them the way, sir,” Tars began, but he was cut off.

“No. You will remain here and make a full report of everything you know about Sorin Pike and his past ventures.”

Lieutenant Forien shot a look at Tars that likely would’ve been triumphant if it weren’t for how much his eyes were watering. He seemed to take this as some kind of vindication for Tars butting in on his interrogation session earlier, and fairly strutted past him to gather his soldiers and go. The security officer was expressionless and silent when the lieutenant ordered him to join the party, but anyone Force sensitive within a four foot radius would have been able to hear him internally screaming.

Luke made a sympathetic face at him as he passed. “If he makes it all the way to that ship, bring fire,” he suggested quietly.

“I shall certainly keep it in mind, sir,” the officer answered with a brief, tight smile.

Luke folded his arms and watched Forien’s party leave. Vader didn’t have a death grip on his shoulder anymore, but perhaps that was because he was standing close enough that shifting his weight even a little would mean he’d be leaning into his father’s tabard. Luke might not have had the same fear of the man as when he’d last seen him, but he certainly wasn’t that comfortable with him!
Not that he wouldn’t have plenty of opportunity to learn, or be forced to adapt. Now that a team had been dispatched to retrieve the last person connected with the incident, Luke suspected that he would be dragged off to the Executor very soon. Probably in binders, as he doubted his father would want to haul him around personally the whole time.

His shoulders fell a little at that, and at the prospect of being either imprisoned or forced to serve the Empire -- though the latter was undoubtedly worse. To his surprise, Vader’s hand did not follow. It simply slid off his shoulders as they slumped, and hung listlessly at his side. A quick glance up revealed that the man was still apparently staring straight ahead, at the doors the lieutenant and his group had just exited. He seemed worlds away.

Testing a theory, Luke eased over a step to the right. When his father did not even turn his head, he took another step, then another, and eventually made it all the way up to Aeshpe without his father reacting at all. Was he truly that distracted? Or was he simply allowing Luke to move around so long as he was still in close proximity? Luke decided to try to ignore this for the moment and turned his attention to the young woman.

“So,” he began in a hushed tone, “What do you think of all this?”

Aeshpe kept an eye on Vader, and her body language all but screamed tension, but she snorted softly. “I think we should take off and smelt the place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure,” she quipped.

“Do not think I have not considered that option,” Darth Vader broke in, badly startling the girl. Luke barely twitched. He’d almost been expecting the Sith to say something eventually.

Nervously, Aeshpe looked from Vader to her parents to Luke, not sure whether it was wise to continue speaking or not. But Vader was not interested in their conversation, it seemed. Instead, he turned to her father and mother, and in a low voice demanded information on Sorin Pike. Even with them distracted, as such, Aeshpe was still wary of speaking aloud.

Luke, apparently, had no such qualms or common sense, she wasn’t sure which it was. He ignored the dark lord -- which was foolish in and of itself in Aeshpe’s opinion -- and shuffled a half step closer to her.

“Hey,” he looked a little sheepish, almost, and periodically glanced back at Vader. “I don’t know how long I’m going to- to be here and, um,” he cleared his throat. “Look, I know I’ve put you through enough already-” and here he subtly moved his head to indicate the Imperial soldiers roaming the lobby, “-but if it’s not too much to ask, could you...could you do something for me?”

“Depends on what it is,” Aeshpe said cautiously. “I’m not getting involved in any kind of Rebel schemes, thank you very much.”

There was a knowing look in Luke’s eyes when he nodded. “Fair enough. But it’s nothing like that. It’s just…” he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Just across those two end-to-end bridges, there’s an X-Wing. It’s mine. And I don’t want it to get stolen or damaged or anything. Could you go find it and wake up the Artoo unit? He’s probably in a power-down mode with this storm.”

Aeshpe frowned. “What do you want me to do with the Artoo unit?”

“He’s smart,” Luke said, and felt a pang at the idea of leaving Artoo behind. They’d been nearly inseparable since his adventures began, and as much as he hated the thought of not having his little friend with him, the idea of him falling into the hands of the Empire was worse. “If you go up and tell him, Looks like a storm’s coming in from the east, he’ll know you’re not there to steal him or anything.”

Heloise was watching them now, with questions in her eyes, but Aeshpe simply shrugged in answer. The more she knew about Luke, the less made sense. Of course he’d have some weird activation code on an Artoo unit. “Anything else I should know?” she sighed.

This would be the difficult part. Luke knew he was about to give up a specific Alliance code in the presence of enemies, and even though it was a code that was only relevant to him, it still felt wrong. Feigning nonchalance, he attempted a half smile and failed. “Not really. Just tell him that I said for him to fly back home and not worry. Oh!-” he added, pretending he’d forgotten something, “And tell him to send my love to Nakari, if you would.”

If he never got the chance to escape, that would be how he got word back to the Alliance. The first phrase would tell Artoo that Aeshpe had his permission to tell him to fly back to the Alliance. The second phrase was for a far more serious contingency plan.

In first three days following the disastrous encounter at Cloud City, Luke had been drifting between panic, denial, guilt, and a decent amount of utter disorientation. Every time he felt cold air, every time he remembered Vader’s words, he had been overcome by fear, certain he’d been found and he’d be drawn into the shadows no matter what he did. The thought of being torn away from his friends -- or worse, losing them in the process -- without them ever knowing why ate at him nearly as much as the guilt he felt knowing that he was the offspring of the man personally responsible for so much of their pain and grief.

He had recorded a message. It was short, rambling, and bordered on the incoherent, but it got the point across. At least, he hoped it did. Just ten or eleven minutes of him explaining what he hadn’t told the Alliance about Dagobah and the fight on Bespin, and begging them to believe that he hadn’t known until then, that even if he had known he still would have joined the Alliance. That he didn’t regret one single moment of fighting alongside them. That if this was the last time they ever saw him alive -- because Force only knew what Vader would do to him for refusing his offer -- he wanted them to know how much he loved them.
That part he meant more for Leia and Chewie and Han, when they rescued him, and the members of Rogue Squadron. Artoo would know who to show it to.
Provided Aeshpe agreed to do it.

Aeshpe bit her lip and Luke saw her eyes dart over to her parents, and to Vader. He understood. She was worried that he might be drawing her into some kind of conspiracy. It was a fair assumption, given that all she really knew about him was that he was a Rebel and Darth Vader was standing right there. But he sensed that she really did want to help him somehow. She wouldn’t betray him.

“Okay,” the girl said at last. “Soon as the storm lets up and we’re allowed to leave, I’ll make sure your droid gets out of the weather safely.” She smiled thinly. “It’s the least I can do, anyway, since you’re the reason I’m even alive right now.”

Luke let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. That, at least, was one less weight on his shoulders. Whatever else happened, at least Leia would know why.
“Thank you, Aeshpe,” he breathed. “You don’t know what that means to me.”

Aeshpe forced a smile in return, but her lips were beginning to tremble. “Um, I think I should sit down now,” she croaked. “Before I-” her shoulders shook and she violently suppressed a sob. “No, no no I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m-” her face crumpled again.

The full weight of the situation was finally catching up to her. Luke understood the feeling: he had been in her place several times before. He nodded sympathetically and took her arm, steadying her. Vader and the elder Zims were still in deep conversation -- he caught something about patron confidentiality being declared irrelevant and Heloise saying something about Pike and papers about scientific discovery -- and none of them seemed to notice when Luke and Aeshpe moved to a chair near an ugly potted fern of some kind a few feet away. Aeshpe collapsed into the overstuffed armchair and Luke lowered himself to the floor beside it.

“This is the worst day of my life,” the librarian groaned into her hands.
Luke didn’t bother mentioning that this ranked as maybe the third or fourth worst for him. It wasn’t a contest, after all.

“Try not to think about it,” he advised. “At least, not until you’re safe at home and can talk about it with someone. But it’s okay to not be okay.”

That was something Han had told him -- and Leia, though he’d been pretending he was only talking to Luke at the moment -- when they were fleeing the Death Star. Han barely knew him, but he’d understood that Ben had meant a lot to him, and he was grieving. Neither of them could truly comprehend the idea of watching an entire planet die, but they’d known the Princess had been grieving too. Luke thought of Han, frozen in carbonite somewhere. He thought of Leia, alone and angry and grieved. He thought of himself, facing an uncertain future.
It’s okay to not be okay, he repeated to himself.

They sat like that for several minutes, with Luke periodically observing the stormtroopers, the patrons, and his father. There was a tension that, surprisingly, had not already been in the room, and it was steadily rising.
The fact that most of it was centered around Darth Vader was not in the slightest bit comforting.

The conversation in the turbolift jumped to his mind, and the way Vader had grown stiffer when Tover was describing the ship. He knew something about the creatures, or at least where they might have come from, and that was almost more disturbing than anything else. Luke huffed and dropped his forehead to his knees, deciding he was better off trying to meditate than dwelling on the problem. Even with Darth Vader distracted, his presence in the Force was still overwhelming and very nearly blotted out everything. It took little imagination to picture the cold heaviness as a beast, a dragon coiled a few feet away and watching him with burning eyes, one “claw” curled loosely around him. Focus, Luke, that’s not helping!

Luke pushed his way through the shadows until he could draw on the Light Side, and almost sighed aloud with relief when he sank into a meditative state without further complications. Without really meaning to, he cast his mind ahead, to the future.
He saw danger, not directed at him, necessarily, but generalized. He saw the ship that Tover had spoken of, burning while creatures of oily smoke reached out. He saw his father, a soft glow beginning to tint towards gray around his heart, radiating outward to lighten his black armor in streaks like lightning.
He saw Leia with her face painted for war and surrounded by places that he knew but had no names for, a lightsaber in her hand. He saw a woman he had only ever seen in holograms of his grandparents. She smiled at him and kissed his forehead, whispering, “Do not be afraid of the Dark, my darling. Do not be afraid to fight to bring your father home.”

Luke came back to awareness gradually, confused but not conflicted. Was what he had seen even possible? Could someone come back from the Dark Side? Yoda didn’t seem to think so, but then, he had said a few other things that sounded...well, weird. Letting out a long breath, Luke pulled himself upright on the edge of the chair. Aeshpe wasn’t sitting there anymore, which gave him a vague idea of how long he’d been meditating. A quick look around revealed that the lobby was nearly deserted, though he could still sense the patrons in the building. They seemed to all be in study rooms or upstairs, still contained but not underfoot. A more thorough scan gave him a glimpse of Aeshpe and her parents conversing softly behind the front desk, Tover cuffed to a pillar in the corner, and- ah. Vader was standing about a foot away, watching him with his arms crossed.

Feeling incredibly awkward, Luke folded his arms in unintentional mimicry and cast about for something to say.
“Did Forien report back?” he asked.

“Lieutenant Forien has not reported back,” Vader corrected him flatly. “It has only been an hour.”

Despite this, Luke was fairly sure the bubbling frustration and impatience he was feeling through the Force was not his own.
He was correct, of course, but Vader would not have admitted it. His mind was caught up in the past.

He’d been young, perhaps even younger than Luke was now. Still a padawan, though not for much longer. He and a platoon of clone troopers had gotten separated from the main fleet during a gravitational disturbance on the edges of Wild Space, and had discovered a ship belonging to neither the Republic nor the Separatists. None of the technology had made sense, nor had the black oozing substance leaking from the-
Vader cut the thoughts off sharply. He needed to focus on the here and now. When he refocused on his surroundings, he realized his son was watching him curiously, several steps closer than he had been a few moments ago. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but a nervous reluctance hovered in the air around him.

On the one hand, he had no intention of allowing Luke to get into the habit of questioning his orders, especially in front of his soldiers. On the other hand, he recognized that the boy was young and would naturally be full of questions -- he shoved away a decidedly un-Sithly pang of loss at the thought of having missed the “why” stage, as well as every other stage of the boy’s childhood -- and it was probably better that he get used to this sort of thing now.

“What is it, Luke?”

The boy shifted his weight from foot to foot and crossed his arms a little tighter across his chest. “Um….if the lieutenant doesn’t report back, what will you do?”

Behind the mask, Vader scowled, tugging at the scars across his face. “The city will be cleared and the the ship will be incinerated from orbit. Just to be sure,” he said, echoing the girl’s words from before. As I should have done years ago.
To his surprise, Luke cracked a smile at this. He’s smiling? Why is he smiling at me?

“Alright, that’s fair.” Luke shrugged, then a soft frown flickered over his face. “What do you mean, years ago?”

It appeared that Luke was not the only one forgetting to shield himself. Vader turned quickly, cursing his carelessness. The boy took two steps closer, keeping himself in Vader’s peripheral vision.

“You have seen these things before!” Luke sputtered. “What are they? Where do they come from?”

“That does not concern you, young one,” Vader growled, and stalked away in search of his soldiers to get a status update on the lieutenant.
Luke trailed obstinately at his heels, obviously not ready to drop the subject.

“Those things spent the better part of an hour or two trying to kill me!” he hissed, “I think that makes it my concern!”

He pulled up short with a stifled yelp when Vader whirled to face him so quickly that he nearly ran into him. Anger, though not necessarily focused on Luke, billowed out around the man and Luke took a couple steps back on instinct.

“I will not discuss this with you here, Luke,” he warned, “Do not pursue this.”

That would have frightened most people into silence, but it only seemed to make Luke more stubborn. He stepped forward again and raised an eyebrow.

“What about on your ship? Will you discuss it there?”

Vader stared. Did the boy realize that it sounded as though he were volunteering to go with him? Was that actually what he was intending to say?

“You said you won’t discuss it here,” Luke prodded, clasping his hands behind his back and resisting the urge to rock back on his heels -- something he used to do when talking Uncle Owen into something he would normally never agree to -- “So will you discuss it on the Executor?”

Now more curious than angry, Vader prodded at the boy’s mind, looking for signs of deception as he asked carefully, “Are you forfeiting any opportunities to escape in exchange for the truth?”

Luke tensed. Was he? It wasn’t as though he really had any way of escaping as it was. Too many stormtroopers, and Darth Vader within arm’s reach. He wouldn’t make it to the front door if he tried. And finding out as much as he could about these...things...just in case there were more sounded more prudent than letting the matter lie. Comes down to if I want to leave here in chains or walking on my own, I guess, he thought.

Aloud, he said with a shrug, “I suppose I am.” Then after a few seconds, added, “Father.”

They stood for a few moments longer, watching each other, before Vader shook his head and, almost too quietly to be heard, muttered, “As stubborn as your mother.”

He knew full well that Luke would demand an explanation later. But he had already determined that this time, as frustrating as it might be, he would take a more gradual approach to drawing the boy to the Dark Side. Giving them something to talk about, he reasoned, would make things easier later.

The little, lopsided grin came back -- it was almost too easy to picture another foolish young Jedi with the same smile, years ago -- and Luke looked away a little sheepishly. Well, if it meant he wouldn’t have to worry about hare-brained escape attempts…

Vader leaned forward. “I accept your bargain,” he announced, and held out a hand.

Luke swallowed hard. Well now you’ve done it, Skywalker. In for a credit, in for an ingot, then. He took a deep breath, silently begged Leia’s forgiveness, and took his father’s hand.

He wasn’t sure if he’d imagined the slight pressure on his fingers or not.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

On Tatooine, there was a story, “Anooba stole Fire”, in which the eponymous animal was caught by Tusken hunters after attempting to take their fire and weapons for the animals on Tatooine.
Krayt Dragon offered to rescue him, saying, “I will help you escape, young Anooba, if you will come with me back to my den and give fire to my clan.”

“How do I know you will not kill me and feed me to your clan’s young?” asked Anooba. “I may have been caught by Tuskens, but I am no fool!”

“If you bring fire to the animals,” Krayt Dragon answered, “You will be a hero to all! I will treat you as if you were my own hatchling, and we will make you one of our clan until the day you show weakness.” Which was the way of most dragons, and was the nearest to a solemn vow that Anooba would ever get.

Anooba wisely feared Krayt Dragon, but he did not want to be killed by the Sand People, and so he agreed. Krayt Dragon killed half the Tuskens and drove the rest away from their nets, and Anooba wriggled free. Now, he could have run then and there, but Krayt Dragon would surely have chased him down again, and anyway, he had given his word. Unlike Jakrab, Anooba always kept his word. And so Anooba took a little pot, and put fire into it, and went with Krayt Dragon back to his den.
And there he remains to this day, the story went, ever alert and waiting for a chance to escape that would never come. For the moment he shows that he is no true dragon, the clan will turn on him. A high price to pay for his escape from the Tuskens!
That was why folk in Anchorhead referred to a person who made a deal with a price higher than the gain as having made “Anooba’s Bargain”.

Luke was beginning to wonder whether he hadn’t just made Anooba’s Bargain himself.

He’d known from the moment he sensed Vader’s presence in the library that escape wasn’t an option. Even still, he had a nagging feeling that he should have at least tried to put up a fight before giving up. Of course, the cracked rib he had been stubbornly ignoring would have complicated any attempts, Luke was forced to acknowledge. And like Anooba, he now found himself doing his best to conceal any signs of weakness as a brief spasm of pain shot through his side.

What would happen now that he’d essentially surrendered? Luke didn’t know if Vader would have him imprisoned, or expect him to follow orders. He grimaced, and decided that if his father decided to present him to the emperor, all bets were off. He wanted to believe there was some good in the man -- something he would never have even slightly considered before this day -- but he didn’t know whether that came from any sense in the Force or from the wishful thinking of a boy desperately hoping something remained of his father in the ominous suit of armor.

He could hope that the Sith’s strangely benevolent behavior would last, and would not turn out to be a mask that would slip once the novelty of having captured him wore off. But that really didn’t change the fact that he was about to be deep into enemy territory at the mercy of an incredibly dangerous man that, quite honestly, he didn’t know at all.

All these thoughts flashed through Luke’s mind within the span of a few seconds, between the time he placed his hand in Vader’s and when Vader somewhat reluctantly released him. Not sure if he’s trying to make sure I don’t run away or if he’s genuinely glad I made the bargain, he mused, restraining himself before he could grimace. Play nice, Skywalker, and maybe you won’t end up in a cell, his more cynical side chimed in. There was a part of his mind -- regardless of how resolutely he tried to ignore the disturbing thought -- that wondered what he would have done had Vader taken this approach at Bespin instead of cutting his hand off and traumatizing him.

Would he have still resisted to the point of leaping off the gantry? Would he even have had the presence of mind to stay out of arm’s reach?
And what about actually trying to kill him? His own father? That was what the Jedi seemed to want him to do, after all. Luke hadn’t really considered it before, having been too busy denying everything Vader had said, but now he couldn’t help wondering if he’d been a pawn in someone else’s game.

Luke decided he didn’t like thinking about that very much at all.

“You are troubled.”
It was a statement rather than a question, which was not terribly surprising. Luke rather doubted that his father was accustomed to asking after people’s health and emotions.

“Troubled doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Luke snorted.

How had conversing with this imposing spectre of a man become so easy, compared to Bespin? Practice, he supposed. He had been pretty well stuck to Vader’s side for the last two hours, and the frequency of conversation had been increasing. Or perhaps it was more that Vader seemed to be making efforts at being less terrifying than usual. Luke folded and unfolded his arms, trying to find something to do so that he wasn’t just standing awkwardly in front of his father, pretending his ribs weren’t aching and pretending he wasn’t going through wildly alternating cycles of being deeply unsettled and being almost comfortable.

“Your lieutenant still hasn’t reported back,” he said, in an attempt to change the subject.

There was a faint prod at his mind then, as if to gauge his mood, but when it was unable to get around his mental shields, Vader resorted to speaking aloud.
“That may be as much the fault of his own incompetence as any outside factor.”

“I was under the impression that incompetent officers did not….last….long under your command,” Luke said very carefully.
He was still surprised that his father had released Forien after Force-choking him, instead of completely asphyxiating him.

“There is a reason I sent him after Pike and not the retired clone,” Vader answered drily.

Luke stuttered for a few seconds, then decided he was better off not thinking too hard about that one. He shuffled a few steps away -- despite every instinct he had screaming at him not to turn his back to the Sith -- and swiveled to lean against one of the pillars in the room.

“So...um, what now?” he asked, a little nervously. It was a bit of a loaded question and he knew it.

Vader nodded towards the doors. “When the storm has passed, we will return to the Executor. If the lieutenant has not reported in by that time, the ship will be destroyed.”

Well, that gave him a little bit of a timeframe, at least. Luke suppressed another sigh and stopped himself just before rubbing his eyes again. “Alright,” he muttered under his breath, “I just...I just need to wash my hands now. This is getting ridiculous.”

“You don’t know that soap would be effective,” Vader pointed out, coming to stand beside him again. He seemed to be having trouble letting Luke get more than a few inches away for more than five minutes.

“Oh, great, there’s a lovely thought,” this time Luke didn’t hide his disgusted face. “Thanks for that.”
He supposed, on sudden reflection, that his tone technically counted as sassing a dark lord, and he somewhat cautiously glanced up out of the corner of his eye. It remained to be seen exactly how much his father would let him get away with, and he wasn’t terribly keen on the idea of pushing too far at the outset.

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before putting your hands in that abomination’s mouth,” Vader shot back, sounding….well, not smug, but something like it.

“It was trying to stab me with it!” Luke protested, waving a hand for emphasis. He shuddered.
Up until he’d mentioned it, he’d successfully avoided thinking about the monsters in the basem*nt. And how close he’d come to dying. This hadn’t been like the incident with the wampa on Hoth, where the monster had at least been in another part of the cave, giving him time to defend himself. No, Luke had known he was fighting a losing battle the moment the creature pounced. If Vader had not been there….

What he was about to do went very strongly against his inclinations, considering that one did not stop thinking of an enemy as an enemy overnight, but Beru and Owen had not raised an ingrate. After a brief look around the room, just to make sure no one was close enough to hear, Luke coughed and mumbled a quick and somewhat garbled thanks. He was not entirely surprised when Vader tipped his helmet towards him in an inquiring manner. He’d barely understood what he’d said himself. Which of course, meant that he now had to endure the increased awkwardness of repeating himself.

Luke took a breath, tried to look anywhere but his father’s expressionless mask, and said the last thing he ever would have expected to say.
“I- I said thank you, Father,” he gulped. “For um, for coming when you did. Which under any other context would have been a bad thing, but-” he cut himself off before he could keep rambling.

Vader leaned back, considering his son for a few heartbeats. Then he reached out tentatively to brush the boy’s hair back out of his face. Luke was tense, but he did not flinch or recoil. That was progress, at least. Rather remarkable for the amount of time he’d had him, though he supposed it was possible that the time between Cloud City and now had begun to soften him to the idea of having a father.

He needed to check on the progress of the search party, and the weather. The sooner he could get Luke off of this planet the better. But at the same time, he was being presented with an opportunity he was unlikely to have again. He pushed back Luke’s hair again and let his hand rest on his head a moment.

“I...regret what occurred at Cloud City,” he said, and realized it was true. “I...feared the thought of that being our last interaction.”

“You, ah, you did?” the boy blinked.

He could very clearly feel Luke’s surprise -- and even the smallest hint of something more peaceful he couldn’t quite put a name to. Your shielding is rather inconsistent, my son. Clearly I have much to teach you, he thought to himself. Not that he wasn’t looking forward to that, even knowing already that the boy would prove to be obstinate.

Darth Vader nodded and let his hand slip down to rest on Luke’s shoulder. “I was...impatient, and it ended in misfortune. I did not intend harm to you at the outset.”

It was the closest he would ever get to apologizing for cutting off the boy’s hand. Which was, of course, a perfectly legitimate way to end a fight non-lethally, but he had timed his revelation very poorly and nearly lost Luke as a result. As he had nearly lost him today.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken the last part aloud until Luke’s head whipped up, staring with wide eyes.

There was a swirl of conflicted emotions muddying the Force around Luke. Surprise, suspicion, a tiny flicker of hope that was half loneliness, but surprisingly no hate and considerably less fear than in previous weeks.
This was, of course, hardly conducive for turning someone to the Dark Side. But Vader looked at the soft, shy emotions just beginning to stretch out towards him and decided that he had no need or desire to instill fear or anger. He preferred to win the boy’s trust first, and direct him naturally from there. There was still time. His master thought he was still relentlessly hunting the boy. And he’d managed to hide him for three years before Bespin, so why should he not be able to hide him again?

Luke seemed as though he were about to say something -- more than likely another question -- but a sense of foreboding overtook them both and he straightened.
“What was that?” he asked in a low voice.

“Stretch out with your senses,” Vader advised calmly. “Identify it.”

Luke fixed him with a long look, partly quizzical and partly worried, but closed his eyes and did as suggested. Vader was careful to keep his surge of triumph behind his shields. So Luke could take direction from him, and without too much protest. It was only a minor matter, but the implications were promising.

All at once, Luke’s eyes flew open. He looked concerned. It was the officer from before, Brask or something. “Something’s wrong.” Luke announced.

Then before his father had a chance to stop him, Luke was off and running for the doors. Of course, he realized that this was a terribly foolish thing to do even without a rather indignant dark lord of the Sith hard on his heels, considering the snowstorm had not calmed at all and he had no idea where he’d left his jacket when he’d first entered the library. But Brask seemed like a decent enough fellow -- not even an Imperial, really, just a very tired security officer -- and Luke didn’t like the idea of leaving him in whatever situation he’d found himself in.

The wind nearly knocked Luke over the moment he was out the door. Eyes watering, he squinted into the blinding mess, seeking the source of the disturbance. The officer was nearby, oddly, and in a somewhat northerly direction. Luke started to slog through the snow towards the life sign, but he didn’t get far. A hand closed on the back of his jacket and he was yanked back into the entryway to face a very irate Darth Vader.

“What are you doing? You gave your word that you would not attempt to escape!” he thundered. His temper was beginning to rise, hissing out around him like little tongues of fire to surround Luke.

Luke tried in vain to squirm out of Vader’s iron grip, which had him on tiptoe at the moment. “I wasn’t trying to escape!” he stammered, heart pounding, “I was trying to find Brask!”

Vader pulled back, holding him at arm’s length for a half second before releasing him, though his presence in the Force still wrapped tightly around him like dragons’ coils, rendering him nearly immobile. Once again, Luke was reminded of just how precarious his position really was.

“And you intended to do so alone in a storm?” his father demanded with an incredulous undertone.

“Look, something’s gone wrong, but if we don’t find that officer, we probably won’t find out what,” he tried to reason. Still Vader stared at him from behind that inscrutable mask. Was he trying to determine if Luke was lying?
Shivering, Luke dropped his mental shields briefly, just long enough for Vader to notice. He swallowed hard.

“Father, please. I wasn’t going to run, I swear. I just want to help.” And I really, really don’t want you hunting me down while you’re angry. Bespin was terrifying enough, thanks.

The coils unwound, albeit a little reluctantly, and Luke found he could move again.
“You might have said so before running off,” Vader growled, though his anger had already faded. Then, “....you are not equipped to go searching in this weather.”

“Well I did bring my gear from Hoth,” Luke shifted back a little out of the way of the wind, trying not to let his relief show too much. “I just don’t remember where I put it, that’s all.” Then, with a little, helpless gesture, “And anyway, I can’t help feeling time is of the essence!”

It would have been easier (and certainly more efficient) for Vader to order to boy back inside and ignore the matter. If the officer was still alive by the time he got to the library, he could deal with it then. But Luke was unlikely to let the matter drop, and he had already seen firsthand how stubborn his son was. Confining him to the library was likely to result in undesirable actions. Such as breaking out of a window and jumping to the rescue, for instance.
He is so very much his father’s son, he thought, exasperated.

At least he hadn’t been trying to escape.
He had noted the disturbance in the Force, but had not finished identifying it when Luke took off running. Vader supposed he ought to have known better than to think his somewhat naive son would so easily break a promise, but there was no taking it back now.

The question was, should he go and investigate what this officer had to say, or not? And if he did, that still left the problem of what to do with Luke. He could simply leave him in the library, he supposed, but the idea of leaving the boy alone left him uneasy. It was not so much that he thought he would try to escape -- not now, anyway -- but there was a kind of foreboding attached to the thought. But on the other hand, he had no intention of taking Luke anywhere near that thrice-blasted ship, especially if it was what he thought it was.

The decision, as it happened, was made for him when Luke tentatively eased past him and back inside. Vader heard him asking someone where the patrons’ coats were kept. That boded ill. He was even less pleased when Luke slipped back outside again in someone else's oversized coat, gloves, and goggles.

“Absolutely not,” he snapped, “Go back inside.” He doubted that would have any effect -- the boy was turning out to be infuriatingly stubborn -- but it was worth a try.

“I’m not leaving that guy out there!” Luke argued. “If you don’t trust me, you can go with me.” Then, as if that had settled the matter, he started towards the wall of white.

“Luke, do not-”

“If you’ll excuse me!” Luke dropped down from the stair at the edge and began pushing through the snow.

Fuming, Vader started out after him, grateful that his vocoder wasn’t picking up his infuriated grumbling. For just a moment, he almost imagined he heard a too-familiar voice laughing delightedly. But it must have been a trick of the wind.
Once he had caught up to Luke, Vader caught his arm and hoped his foolhardy child could feel his glare despite the mask.

“Do not make the mistake of believing that this reckless behavior will be allowed to continue when we are back on the Executor,” he warned, “Regardless of what the Rebel Alliance normally allows.”

If not for the little spike of fear he felt through the Force, he would not have been sure Luke had heard him over the wind at all.

As much as Luke knew that irritating Darth Vader was an excellent way to shorten one’s life expectancy, he also knew that if he let his father intimidate him into compliance now, it might become a pattern. Even if he was going to be imprisoned on a super star destroyer with his estranged father hovering to make sure he didn’t escape, he wasn’t going to let the man keep him from helping someone if he could.

Most of the snow had stopped by now, but the wind had not eased in the slightest, whipping up powder and ice around them. It was enough to make Luke almost grateful for Vader’s death grip on his arm, keeping him anchored to something at least.

“He’s this way!” he called, tugging the armored giant towards the direction of a sudden burst of frantic emotions.

The transport vehicle -- not quite a speeder, as it ran along the ground on heavy treads -- was lined with bright yellow lights for visibility’s sake, which was how they found it. It had run over a barrier and was stalled, treads spinning uselessly in the air while proximity alarms chimed. Luke pulled the door open with a grunt and climbed up into the cab. Officer Brask still sat in the driver’s seat, clutching the steering controls as if his hands had frozen to them. Blood was running down the left side of his face from an injury Luke couldn’t quite see and he was muttering unintelligible pleas under his breath.

“Hey, are you okay?” Luke reached out to touch his shoulder and the officer shied away with a cry. “Easy, easy! I’m here to help.” Luke glanced warily back at Vader for a moment, but the man remained where he was, gripping the edge of the doorframe.
“Brask, right? It’s okay, we’re going to get you back to the library, alright?”

Brask slowly pulled himself upright and stared at Luke for several seconds before he finally seemed to recognize him. “You shouldn’t be here, Commander,” he whispered.

Luke sighed. “Well, you’re not the first person to say so.”

“Report, officer,” Vader ordered, “Where is the lieutenant and the rest of your party?”

Brask turned haunted eyes towards the mask, and his voice shook as violently as the rest of him as he choked, “Gone. All gone.”
Then, in a low rasp, he added, “We found the Kiva.”

There was a sharp crack as the doorframe snapped in two under Vader’s hand.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Luke whipped around as the frame of the transport vehicle began to warp and tremble.
“Ah...what? What’s going on?” he tried to ask, but the words came out muted.

He could feel rage building up around them, and pain, and even fear. Of the Dark Side are they, Yoda’s voice whispered unhelpfully in his memories. Luke ignored this. A good deal of that fear was his own, after all, and he was fairly certain it was justified given the circ*mstances.

“Get out of transport,” Vader growled, one hand still clamped around the door frame. When Brask did not comply quickly enough, he caught his arm and hauled him bodily from the vehicle, depositing him none too gently in the snow.
“Transmit a message to the Executor and relay to the admiral that this has become an Emergency Condition 7812. He is to clear the city,” he hissed, hauling the officer to his feet. “This place is now a quarantine zone.”

Luke was more startled that his father had ordered the city evacuated than anything else. Previous reports of incidents delivered by Alliance intelligence suggested that his usual method of dealing with containment breaches was to indiscriminately burn everything. Was this for his sake? No, don’t be ridiculous, Skywalker. You’re not that much of an influence.

Luke crouched in the door of the transport vehicle and frowned, pulling his collar up higher around his face against the wind. Was Kiva the name of this ship? This certainly aligned with his theory that Vader knew exactly what the ship was and where it had come from. On the one hand, Luke wanted the truth behind that, wanted to know why these creatures made Vader so….well, the only word he could dredge up was protective, as strange as it was to apply that to Darth Vader. But on the other hand, what if Vader was responsible for the creatures’ existence?
Luke supposed it wouldn’t be any different than any of the other atrocities his father had committed. But something cold and sick tugged at his heart about that, about the idea of his own father being in any way responsible for the things that had nearly killed him only hours ago -- especially considering how many other brushes with death had been his doing -- and he couldn’t help a childish hope that it wasn’t true.

Brask scrambled away, stammering and saluting, and made for the faint red glow of the library’s lights in the wind-blown snow. Luke let out a startled squawk when Vader reached up and pulled him out as well, shielding him from the wind for just a moment. That, Luke had not expected. He did his best not to stare at the way snow was building up on the skeletal mask like fluffy white eyebrows. It would do no one any good if he were to laugh. That sounded like an excellent way to incur wrath.

“Come,” Vader said sharply. “You’ve found your officer, now we are returning to the library to wait for Piett.”

Luke supposed that was probably fair.

“Father,” he began, but the wind snatched his words and flung them away. Frustrated, he tried again, louder. But that too was lost in the storm. With few other options available, Luke reached for the place in the back of his mind where Vader’s presence had hovered, almost brooding, ever since Bespin.

Father, what’s the Kiva? Why are you quarantining the city? Uncomfortably, Luke wondered how many times had he addressed the man with that particular title. Six? Seven? It was getting troublingly easy.

He did feel an acknowledgment of sorts, just enough to prove that his father had heard the question. There was even a mild curiosity -- perhaps because Luke had initiated the contact between their minds. But there was no reply. Vader simply grasped his shoulder and pushed him forward through the rapidly disappearing trail in the snow Brask had left behind.

When he did not receive an answer, Luke tried to summon the courage to ask another question. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, or if Vader would be angered by him asking, but he needed to know.
Did….did you- he couldn’t finish. He had a suspicion that the intention behind the unfinished question was probably easily discerned in this form of communication, however. He wasn’t sure he liked that.

“The ship is nearly a century old. It would be unusual for me to have created it and the organisms that developed in its laboratories before I was born, would it not?” Vader said aloud, somewhat acidly.

Luke swallowed and avoided his gaze, fiddling with his goggles. That was more information than he’d been hoping for, at least, and it assuaged the worst of his misgivings, but raised others.

The lights of the library grew more visible as father and son paused to climb over a barrier that might have been a fountain before being so thoroughly covered in snow that only the very top of a duracrete Toydarian cherub was visible. Luke stumbled on the edge of the fountain and plunged headlong into a snowdrift. On any other planet -- with perhaps the exception of Hoth -- and in any other circ*mstances, he would have found that amusing. As it was, he flailed until he was upright again, face burning, and was glad for once that Vader’s mask was expressionless.

Are you going to have the Executor fire on the ship? he asked after a few moments of stiff, awkward silence. He did his best to keep his embarrassment from leaking into the bond, but a little slipped out despite his best efforts.

At first, it seemed as though his father wasn’t going to answer him again. But at last he turned his helmet slightly and nodded, an unnecessary but appreciated addition to their decidedly unorthodox communication.
Once all life within the ship has been eradicated, yes.

Luke stopped in his tracks, causing Vader to stop just as quickly if the sudden way the cape swirled up over his arm was anything to go by.
After everything is dead? he asked, surprised. Wouldn’t it save time and risk to just smelt the thing from space?

There was a thread of something, not quite eagerness, something else that wound around them both in the Force. It was a sense of seizing an opportunity presented before it was lost. Luke was somewhat baffled by this, but took it to mean his father was not currently annoyed by his questions. He hoped that was what it was, at least.

It would be easier, certainly, Vader replied, But it would not guarantee the utter destruction of the organisms. If even one escaped the inferno, the process might begin again. The surrounding area must be cleansed. Do you understand?

Luke cringed at the thought of the nightmare repeating elsewhere, and he nodded. That makes sense, unfortunately, he agreed. His answer met with a flicker of satisfaction.

Then another thought occurred to him, and he glanced up, brushing powder from his goggles as they neared the library entrance. Does this mean that more stormtroopers will be coming down to the surface with Piett?

Vader inclined his helmet slightly, speaking aloud again once they had stepped back into the sheltered overhang in front of the doors. “Admiral Piett is not coming to the surface. He must remain with the ship. He is sending a specified division of the 501st down. There are procedures in place for instances of hostile biohazard containment. In time, you will learn them.”

Deciding to bypass the troubling thought of learning Imperial procedures and protocols -- or the even more troubling idea of a situation where he might do so willingly and obediently -- Luke puffed out a breath and focused on the way it formed a little cloud before dissipating.

“Are you going with them?” he asked as casually as he could with his teeth chattering as violently as they were.

The cape snapped, flinging snow across the duracrete as Vader turned sharply to bring the full force of his gaze to bear on Luke.

“If you believe I will leave you with a few easily outwitted stormtroopers, you are greatly mistaken, my son,” he growled.

“Hey! I gave my word that I wouldn’t make a run for it!” the young man protested, mildly outraged. Maybe breaking a promise was nothing to a Sith, but Luke had been raised to keep his word. Even to people he didn’t trust.

"That was not my concern," Vader returned flatly.

As he spoke, a spike of interest lit the Force around them briefly in reaction to Luke's offense, and the shadows seemed to curl down from the overhang and around his shoulders almost warmly. His shivering eased just the slightest bit, and he wondered if the shadows or their master were aware of that.

When Luke felt a rather sharp nudge at his mental shields, he held out for a few seconds, pushing back stubbornly. He was somewhat refreshed after meditating earlier -- though he knew it was a temporary measure only -- which gave him the strength to resist. But eventually he decided that, like before, he was probably better off just letting his father sense that he was telling the truth.
Would it always be like this now? A nerve-wracking lack of privacy any time the Sith thought he might be concealing something? Luke’s gut twisted into a knot at the thought.

When you have accepted that your place is within the Empire, at my side, there will be no lingering concerns of escape attempts, Vader spoke over the link between them in a very no-nonsense way, as if Luke defecting wasn’t even in question.

The knot twisted a little tighter.

Luke resisted the urge to cross his arms tightly over his chest in a vaguely defensive gesture and focused on breathing and releasing his anxiety into the Force. At least the cold had numbed him to the point where his rib wasn’t bothering him quite as much as it had been before -- although with his track record, he would probably still have to keep a close eye on it lest he forget and then accidentally make it worse. Before he could follow that jakrab trail in his memories to think about past injuries, Vader spoke in his mind again.

Considering the fervor with which you defend yourself when your word is questioned, am I to assume that, if armed, you would still hold to your word?

This shocked Luke out of his dismal thoughts. Was Vader actually suggesting that he might give back his lightsaber? He quickly tamped down the little surge of hope he’d felt at that. No, he’d probably been referring to some point after being dragged away into the Empire. When he was probably going to be expected to behave like a -- what was it General Syndulla had called them? Oh, Inquisitors.

The shadows curled more tightly around his shoulders, almost as tangible as claws resting far too easily beside his face, and Luke took a shaky breath. I don’t break my promises.
Although he was still holding “face to face encounter with Palpatine” as the one exception to this rule.

It was decidedly strange to have one’s thoughts sifted for lies while one was speaking telepathically. It put Luke on edge, and he clenched his hands into fists inside his pockets, silently praying that it wouldn’t last long. There was a brush against his mind that, while brusque, was careful, and carried a sense of something almost like a hint of affection. As if in concert with the strange sensation, the almost-solid shadows flickered against his cheek for the briefest of heartbeats. Then Vader withdrew, and Luke took a moment to compose himself before hastily erecting his shields once more.

Vader studied the boy for a moment after leaving his mind. He was clearly unused to this form of communication, and it was obvious that it unsettled him. In time, Luke would learn not to fear their connection, to be open with him, but he knew he would have to earn that trust. He could only hope he had time to do so before the emperor discovered that he’d finally managed to capture his wayward offspring.
Unless he could actively conceal Luke in the Force -- something he had not attempted now that he knew Palpatine was aware of the boy’s existence -- Vader gave them three months or less before word reached Coruscant.

He looked again at his son and noticed that Luke was not hiding his shivering very well. Of course, he hadn’t said anything, but Vader hadn’t truly expected him to. He was still wary of his father, which Vader supposed was sensible enough. Given their previous encounters, he rather grudgingly admitted to himself, it would have been a little concerning if Luke had simply thrown caution to the winds and behaved as if they had always known each other. Nevertheless, it would cost him nothing to set the boy at ease somewhat concerning his own mood. Or try to, at least.

“Is it necessary for you to remain out of doors now that your mission is complete?” he said, infusing his voice with as much sarcasm as the vocoder would allow, still a trifle irritated that the boy had insisted on going out at all.

He was slightly surprised -- although that was not to say displeased -- when he succeeded in startling a half-smile out of the boy.
This was only to help put him at ease with what would be his future, Vader told himself. When Luke no longer flinched at the slightest mental contact, there would be no need to continue with these vague reassurances. But compared to his own dark emotions and the deeply unpleasant task that lay ahead of him, he preferred the smile to the tension of previous moments. It was a welcome relief.

“No, I suppose not,” Luke shuffled towards the door, brushing small flurries of white from his clothing with stiff, clumsy fingers.

“Then it seems we are in agreement.”

Though he did not feel the cold nearly as much as Luke surely had, it was of considerable relief to be back indoors where ice could not build up around his life support unit and respirator. Luke stamped his boots, trying to rid himself of still more snow -- a futile endeavor, in Vader’s opinion, as they would soon be forced to go back out again anyway -- and somewhat carelessly flung his borrowed coat into the room set aside for patrons’ gear.

Vader very nearly remarked upon it, as he did not like the idea of Luke carrying such behavior to the Executor, but it sounded too much like Obi-wan to his mind, and he held his tongue. He watched as Luke took two steps from the coatroom, paused, cringed as if he was hearing something no one else could, then returned. He shook the coat out and hung it back up neatly, muttering something under his breath that sounded like, “Sorry, Aunt Beru. You’d have hated that.”

Luke let a bittersweet smile cross his lips for a moment as he thought about his aunt and uncle. Owen would have hated the snow. He and Luke could have had one of their half-playful “gripe gnashes”, as Owen used to call them, where they would find the most insignificant part of a bad situation and pretend it was the least tolerable of all. And Beru -- quick with a smile and quicker with a blaster -- would have loved everything. The snow, the rainbow colors in the sky, the library most of all.

He started to make his way back towards the main lobby, figuring that was where any stormtroopers left would be and therefore where Vader would go. It wouldn’t occur to him for several minutes that his initial reaction when his father caught his arm and pulled him back was only a little bit of trepidation and mostly annoyance. Though, he supposed, if Vader intended to talk about things he didn’t want overheard, the entryway was private enough.

Somehow, the plan had changed from waiting for the storm to end so that the Imperials could take him back to their ship to waiting for the storm to end so that the Kiva could be destroyed with extreme prejudice. And Luke still wasn’t sure where he fit into all of that. A little thread of guilt wound around his heart as he realized that if he had not rashly given his word earlier, while thinking that escape was impossible anyway, he might’ve had an opportunity when Vader left for the Kiva. But as it was, he could not bring himself to break that promise. What sort of Jedi would that make him?
There was nothing for it. He would have to ask.

“When your...backup….arrives,” he began, searching for the right words, “What happens to me?”
Would he be kept in a cell? Or left in the library until Vader returned? If that was the case, he couldn’t help wondering what measures they would take to ensure that he didn’t escape before his father came back. An image flickered across his mind of the magbinders Grakkus had kept him in on Nar Shadda, and he was hard pressed not to shudder.

Everything about Darth Vader practically screamed reluctance as he answered, “You will accompany us to the ship.”
He was clearly not happy about the answer. Did he think it was the only way he could keep Luke from escaping?

Luke paused that line of thought when the rest of the sentence caught up with him.

“The Kiva?! Wait, wait, you’re not-” lost for words, he gestured helplessly, the fear of the previous hours rolling back in like the tide. Here, under bright lights and heat, he had been able to put the creatures out of his mind for a short while. But to deliberately walk into their nest?

“You will be armed. That is, I presume, your primary concern,” Vader inclined his helmet slightly in what might have been a reassuring gesture on any other being. “That you possess adequate skill with a lightsaber is the only reason I have chosen not to risk sending you with guards back to the Executor.”

Luke couldn’t help wincing a little at the word “adequate”. He knew he wasn’t proficient, and certainly didn’t have the experience his father did, but he liked to think he was at least a little better than just “adequate”.

Unexpectedly, Vader tilted towards him and, very stiffly and uncomfortably, remarked, “For the paltry amount of training you have had, your progress is undoubtedly impressive. But you require further training.”

It was almost part compliment and part apology. This seemed to be the day for Darth Vader doing and saying strange things, Luke decided. But there was a part of him that hoped it would go on happening. Maybe his grandmother -- or the Force using an image of his grandmother? He wasn’t sure -- was right. Maybe there was still some light in his father.
But then, there had to be, right? If he were truly beyond hope, he would have killed Luke long before Bespin. Family would mean nothing to him. Or else he would at the very least have treated Luke no differently than anyone else under his thumb: a tool to be used and discarded. But the fact of the matter was that he was either behaving extraordinarily out of character and the act would soon end, or there was still a part of his heart that was good.

Luke frowned and shifted two steps closer to Vader. He lowered his voice, even though there was no one within ten feet of them. “You think that Force sensitives are more likely to survive whatever is in that ship, don’t you?”
Vader didn’t answer, but he crossed his arms and that, to Luke, seemed like answer enough.

There was some dark emotion, not hate or anger, but something between fear and melancholy that seemed to rise from the black armor in little, muted wisps. Given the strength of Vader’s mental shields, this seemed to suggest very strong emotions at the moment. Luke half expected him to pace like a caged anooba. It was a marked difference from their tentatively friendly interactions before going out to find Brask.
None of it boded well.

Luke was about to say something when Vader put a hand on his shoulder.
“One of the soldiers who will be arriving is a field medic,” he announced, “You will have him see to your rib before the attack.”

“Oh,” Luke managed, “Ah, alright. I think a bacta spray and a couple painkillers should manage it for now.” He shifted from foot to foot restlessly, glancing around the lobby. Then, hoping he wasn’t pushing his luck, he slid a half step closer.

“Father, what are we about to walk into?” he whispered. When he’d used the title before, Vader had reacted positively. Perhaps this would work to his advantage in getting through the wall of dark, frenzied energy his father seemed to be gathering around himself like a cloak. “What’s in the Kiva besides the eggs?”

The leather of Darth Vader’s gloves creaked as he curled his free hand into a tight fist. “Something the Jedi failed to destroy long ago,” he snarled.

Well. That had certainly not been what Luke had been expecting to hear. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times before he gasped out, “Th- the Jedi? How do you know they knew about it?”

The hand on his shoulder tightened, almost possessively, and Luke stumbled a little as Vader pulled him closer.

“Because,” the Sith rumbled, “I did not find that ship by happenstance. They sent me there.”

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Wild Space: 21 BBY
Republic Light Cruiser Equinox

Anakin Skywalker chewed his lip thoughtfully and stared out the viewport. The scans had been correct: there was something out here. He knew Master Windu would’ve preferred to handle this himself -- whether that was a lack of confidence in him or just a general desire to get off of Coruscant, Anakin really didn’t know -- but matters of politics and battle plans kept the Jedi master busy.

Frankly, he would have felt much better about this whole affair had the rest of the fleet been with them. But Obi-wan’s ship had been caught in some kind of gravitational disturbance and held back over a small moon -- he was quite sure that his master would be sporting at least four new injuries when they all caught up together again -- and two other cruisers had been spun out of hyperspace by the fluctuations. The Equinox and her crew were on their own.

Anakin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. The prosthetic didn’t quite pick up sensations particularly well, but he could still tell he was going to need a haircut soon. An idle thought traced through the back of his mind that if they’d covered the arm with synth-skin, perhaps they could have done some nerve-mapping so that he retained feeling. But that kind of technology was new and very expensive. Not something the Jedi would have approved of, that was for certain.

Of course, Anakin was beginning to suspect that his brand-new mother-in-law and father-in-law might’ve been willing to put up the credits for it, but he couldn’t do that to them. It was miracle enough that they’d given their blessing to his and Padme’s marriage, he wasn’t sure he’d ever have the courage to impose on them for anything else. Thoughts of Padme made for a very sharp contrast in mood to the way he felt about this strange, floating hulk.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Anakin murmured, though not loud enough for the platoon of clones to hear. He didn’t want to worry them.

A flash of cold anger twisted in his gut for a moment, and he was instantly ashamed of it. The clone army was a necessary measure, wasn’t it? Just in the name of keeping peace? Years later it would hit Anakin that he knew, had always known on some level, that the soldiers were not free men and had never truly had a choice.

“Alright, bring us up close, Squares,” Anakin shoved away his thoughts and leaned over the railing of the bridge. “See if there’s a place to dock.”

“Squares” -- CT-922-22 -- nodded and swung the Equinox around as carefully as possible. “Looks pretty old, sir. We may need to send a smaller craft to investigate.”

He was right. The design of the large craft was obsolete, and was unlikely to have the kinds of docking clamps needed to allow for travel between the cruiser and the unknown ship. Anakin had seen a few research vessels of this nature when he was younger, traveling with Obi-wan, and he had a pretty good guess of where the hangars might be.

“Alright,” he said again, slowly, “Bring us up under the craft. The hangars will probably be along the bottom, third and fourth quadrants. Have we attempted to hail them yet?”

“Aye sir,” answered another clone, Inch, nodding. “No response. There’s limited power, as best I can tell, but nobody’s home.”

It was fairly obvious by this point that Anakin wasn’t the only man uneasy about the floating hulk. Wild Space was unpredictable and uncharted, and no one really liked being this close to it with a war on. If they’d been at peace, it might’ve provided a fascinating opportunity for exploration...but Anakin would’ve far preferred to be home -- be that on Coruscant or the Varykino estate on Naboo -- with Padme.

Still, the Council was going to want a report on this place, and they needed to make sure no Separatists were hiding in it -- or else ensure no Separatists could hide in it. It was decently placed to be a good hideout, Anakin supposed, if one didn’t mind the possibility of star clusters ripping your ship apart in a maelstrom or unidentified planets proving to be hostile.

“I’m going in,” Anakin announced, already knowing that no one would question him, but feeling the need to say it anyway. “We’ll keep it small for now, just in case.”
He scrolled through a datapad listing the crew of the ship and chose seven soldiers to go with him.
“Tip, Eights, Drop, Talo, O’Sev, Ricochet, and Nix, meet me at the shuttle. EVA suits, guys, we don’t know if there’s life support over there.”

The short trip between the Equinox and the unknown craft was spent in relative silence save for the muted clicks and hums of weapons being checked and re-checked. As Anakin had predicted, they found an open hangar on the underside of the ship. There was an atmospheric shield covering it, but it looked flimsy and flickered alarmingly. The soldiers and Anakin double checked their EVA suits before going out. Who knew if the air was safe out there?

The hangar was massive, derelict but full of equipment that had obviously once been used. Keeping a tight grip on his blaster, O’Sev turned in place and whistled appreciatively.
“Look at the size of this place! You could fit a couple tanks in here and still have room for fighters!”

“Which is why we’re investigating,” said Nix dryly. “To make sure no one did.”

Anakin started to run a hand over his face, remembering just in time that the helmet would make that impossible, and sighed. He didn’t sense any living beings near them, but he knew that didn’t mean there weren’t droids lurking nearby. Still, there was some kind of warning whispering through the Force around him. Just a faint breath of danger, but not yet specified.

“Stay sharp, guys,” he said. “Let’s try to find the control center, see if we can turn on life support or something. Nobody wander off. Something’s weird about this place.”

A cursory examination of the rest of the hangar revealed several damaged all-terrain vehicles and crates of outdated probe droids, all with the same name stamped along the side. Ricochet brushed flaking paint away from one of the vehicles and frowned behind his helmet.

“Looks like it says Kiva. They all say that, actually. Is that the name of the ship, or the company that sent the ship? I assume it’s a company, anyway.” This was odd conjecture on Ricochet’s part, as he hadn’t the slightest idea how companies or civilian organizations worked at all.

Anakin leaned over his shoulder and prodded a few of the dormant drones in the crate. “These are twenty, thirty years old at least,” he murmured. “Whoever was out here was either using really old tech, or they’ve been gone for a very long time.”
The feeling of uneasiness was beginning to coil tighter in his stomach. He checked his belt to make sure his lightsaber was in easy reach, then took a breath. “Let’s keep moving.”

The ship was eerily silent. Flickering yellow emergency lights painted the corridors in sickly hues as the party moved up into the second level of the ship. They came up amidships, between what appeared to be a block of cabins, and some kind of laboratory. The doors were open, spilling their ransacked contents like gaping wounds. If the Kiva was based on the general design of a Lantillian ShipWrights’ GX1 Short Hauler -- which it seemed to be, albeit much larger and with two extra sublight engines along the sides -- then power and life support would be athwartships, near the fore. Carefully skirting the block of chambers, Anakin and his team made their way leeward. They quickly found that the life support and main computers were on the opposite side of the ship than they’d been expecting, and had to go starboard again.

Somewhat nervously, Talo started fiddling with the controls, trying to decipher the faded directions on a tiny square of flimsiplast someone had stuck to the panel with a square of silver space-tape.
“Should’ve brought a droid,” he muttered under his breath, “None of this stuff is standard!”

Gently, Anakin nudged him aside. “Here, let me try,” he offered. After a few fruitless efforts, the Kiva’s systems began to boot up, slowly but steadily.

Soft, white lights replaced the sickly yellow, and warning messages began chiming, talking over one another in soft, feminine voices about low power, a hull breach in a leeward cargo hold, and low oxygen levels. Talo examined the readouts, then turned back to the others.

“We’ve got enough power to seal up the force fields in the hangars and stabilize life support for two hours, or fully power the ship for one hour. We can’t do both.” he said.

Eights raised a hand. “Ah, if we’re taking votes on this, I’m all for breathing,” he joked. There was a chorus of assenting murmurs, and the comforting lights were soon switched off again in favor of rerouting power to life support.

“Commander?” Drop called from where he’d been investigating one of the consoles, “I think you may want to have a look at this.”

Anakin slipped his helmet off as the oxygen levels in the ship stabilized -- what a relief to be out of that stuffy mask and able to breath freely again! -- and ran his fingers through his hair as he crossed the small space to look down at the screen. It appeared to be the ship’s logs, beginning with the initial launch from an asteroid base not far from Lantillies and cutting off abruptly about eight months later. The most recent report had been made almost thirty years ago. This suggested that there had been no Separatist activity -- well, none involving sentients, considering the state of the life support. The fact that the life support was functioning at all after so long was a minor miracle, really. Whatever the old vessel had been using for a power source must have been quite efficient. Anakin was almost tempted to actually look into what powered the ship as he scanned the logs briefly, looking for any clues as to the original owners of the Kiva.

“Uncharted planet RS19-79 discovered,” he read aloud, “Mountains appear to be hollow. Expedition made.”
He scrolled a little further down in the entries, skipping the geological and atmospheric findings of the Kiva on RS19-79 until something stood out to him.
“Canisters of unknown compound retrieved, possible alien bioweapon. Very effective on uncategorized architect species. Effects on humans unknown.”

Cursing under his breath, Anakin reached for his helmet again. “EVA suits back on, boys, possible biohazard.” It was of some small comfort to know that they were as annoyed as he was.

Something tugged at his awareness. There was something out of place about the Kiva, like a ripple in a pond. What had changed? Anakin stretched out with his senses and soon found his answer. There was a life form aboard. Whether it had come aboard recently or whether it had simply been out of the range of his senses before, he wasn’t sure. But it would have to be checked out either way.

“I sense there is a presence back towards the life pods,” he murmured to Talo. And there was another thing: why had only one of the escape pods jettisoned? By the looks of the schematics, they were all still present except for a small, single-seat raft. “We need eyes on it. I’m taking O’Sev, Ricochet, and Drop to check it out. You stay here with Eights, Nix, and Tip and track our progress.”

“Yes sir,” said Talo, though he didn’t seem particularly happy about it. “Shall I keep going through the logs, sir?”

Anakin thought a moment, then nodded. “Sure. We’re going to need to know what happened to the crew for the report anyway. If you find anything interesting -- or, well, disturbing too, I guess -- let me know over the comms.”

The further away from the computer station he got, the more pronounced his bad feeling was. For a moment, Anakin considered contacting his master. But no, Obi-wan was probably busy, and would likely be cross if Anakin called him about a bad feeling and it turned out to be nothing.
A quick check of the medbay revealed smashed equipment, two deactivated drones of some kind, and a surgical pod covered in dark stains.

“I’m guessing it’s too much to hope that that’s not blood,” Ricochet whispered to O’Sev.

“I don’t want to know, I just don’t want to know,” O’Sev said firmly.

They made a cursory examination of the crew’s quarters. The first few cabins looked nearly untouched. Aside from a few comlinks that had been knocked to the floor by some bygone impact, it was if the people aboard had just suddenly left. Some of the latter cabins had very clearly been ransacked, and it occurred to Anakin that he and his men might not have been the first to discover the Kiva floating dead in space. If it truly had been drifting along for so many years -- somehow keeping from being caught in various orbits -- surely others had thought to explore it before. Why had no one ever claimed it as salvage?

“Commander Skywalker?” Talo’s voice crackled over the in-helmet comms. “Eights just read off the crew roster. This was a fifteen-man vessel with a lot of astromech droids. They’re all listed as dead or otherwise destroyed. Every one of ‘em, except for a…” he paused to read off the name, “Nute Weaver. She signed off on these last logs. And there’s one astromech not accounted for.”

Fourteen people and almost a full complement of astromech droids destroyed? What had happened here? Drop eased up to walk beside Anakin and waited until the Jedi padawan glanced over, acknowledging him.

“Sir,” Drop said softly, “I don’t think we’re going to find any Seppies in here. The droids wouldn’t be too bothered by this, but they get their orders from flesh and blood, like us. And even a Seppie would find this place...unsuitable, I think.”

Anakin opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a cry of dismay from Ricochet, ahead of them.
“Found a body!”

It looked humanoid, though thirty years of rotting away in a derelict science vessel had obscured its features somewhat. The low atmosphere before they’d restored life support had preserved it a little, enough that there was still some shrunken, desiccated skin on the bones, but not enough to identify the species. O’Sev prodded the corpse gingerly and swept a scanner over it.

“Doesn’t look like he died of a toxin, or whatever that biohazard was,” he guessed, “Scanner’s reading as near-human, or mostly-human.”

“Big fella, for a human,” Anakin observed, wrinkling his nose. “And I thought I was tall.”
He looked around, distracted. The sense of foreboding that had been growing on his mind was now an outright warning, like a cold hand wrapping around his heart. They needed to leave, and leave quickly.

“Did he get shot?” Drop asked suddenly, crouching to point at the corpse’s chest, “There’s a hole in the armor here.”

O’Sev ran the scanner over it and frowned deeply. He shook his head. “Not unless it was a solid projectile through the back, and even then I’m not sure. Look, look at his ribs. It’s like something punched out.” He reached down and touched what appeared to be blood, oddly still tacky. It shone on the fingers of his glove for an instant, then vanished.

He stood up quickly. “Might be one of the crew.”

“Might be,” Anakin fidgeted. He could sense the lifeform from before moving, but in his agitated state he couldn’t get a fix on its location. But he didn’t need to. He was making an executive decision. “Something’s not right. We’re leaving.”

“Commander, are you or any of the soldiers with you headed back up to life support?” Talo suddenly asked over the comm channel.

Ricochet, Drop, O’Sev and Anakin all exchanged concerned glances.
“No, Talo, we’re all aft, around engineering.”

“Then if that’s not you, we’ve got something headed our way. We’ll hold position the best we can.”
There wasn’t a door sealing life support off from the rest of the ship -- a bit of a design flaw, in Anakin’s opinion -- meaning that it was not the most defensible position aboard.

“Let’s go,” Anakin said, though he hardly needed to speak at all. Ricochet, Drop, and O’Sev were already up and headed back up the corridor. With any luck, it would be something innocuous, like a curious explorer -- that the Equinox didn’t report? Yeah right -- or a mynock or something. But then, even thinking things like “with any luck” seemed to guarantee the opposite effect these days.

Nix’s voice blasted over their comms, strained but not panicked. “What in blazes is that thing?!”
The sound of blaster fire echoed over the channel and through the derelict ship, with a wash of an emotion blending apprehension and disgust.

The Force hissed frantic warnings about what they were walking into. Anakin pushed to the front of the group -- ah, the benefits of having longer legs, and never mind the teasing of his fellow padawans -- and ignited his lightsaber. Now he could sense something more clearly about the life-form: an animalistic rage and hunger, and something else, a malevolent curiosity. Please let me be in time, please let me save them this time, please please please-

In battle, he’d felt the deaths of clones too many times to count, and he knew as the war went on, he’d only feel it more. But it still felt like someone driving a fist into his gut when Eights was suddenly just gone, a ragged hole in the tapestry of life signatures around them.
The knowledge settled cold in his heart: he’d failed to save someone else. He felt the flash of anger, let it be for a moment, then suppressed it. People lived, people died as the Force willed, he told himself, and feeling anger over it was not the Jedi way. Right?

“Stay close,” he ordered the others. They passed the labs and the common room and headed straight for life support. That was when they began to hear the screaming.

Eights was on the floor, drenched in blood. Above him crouched a lanky, grotesque figure that bordered on the ghastly. Its creased, dark hide seemed more like a leathery exoskeleton than skin, and it glistened with blood that was clearly not its own. It was facing down Talo and Nix -- though how it was seeing them without any visible eyes, they weren’t sure. Tip was creeping up slowly from the side with his pistol drawn.

All three opened fire at once, shouting profanities and cursing the strange being for the death of their brother. It hopped and twisted like a lizard-monkey, dodging the majority of the bolts. Then a shot from Nix clipped its arm and the thing let out an ear-splitting screech. It fell back, landing on Tip, clawing and scrabbling to right itself. Something green dripped from the wound on its arm and fell on the clone’s chest with an ominous hiss. Tip screamed, flailing at the creature and trying to push it off. Anakin thrust out a hand and sent it flying into the wall as he rushed to Tip’s side.

“Burns,” the clone gasped, “It burns!”

There was a hole, not much bigger than a restraining bolt, where the liquid had fallen. The EVA suit hadn’t been much protection at all. In the time it took to sit Tip up, the liquid -- some kind of acid -- had burned through the EVA suit, the armor, and the man underneath it, straight into the floor and beyond. Horrified, Anakin barely noticed Talo and O’Sev raising their guns again as the creature appeared from behind one of the consoles again.

A warning chimed overhead and a voice from the computers announced, “Biological hazard: life support. Emergency containment measures online.”
Before they could wonder what had activated the ship’s containment measures, or why they hadn’t activated before, a heavy door slid down from the ceiling, cutting life support off from the rest of the Kiva.

“Sir?” Drop sounded panicked.

“Cover me,” Anakin said grimly, “Don’t let its blood touch you!”
He turned his attention to the door and began cutting through it. It was slow going.

Behind him, Nix ducked out of the way as the creature launched itself at them. Talo fired, but it was too close to get a good shot in. Quickly, he threw his rifle up as a block between himself and the being, keeping its snapping jaws away from his mask. With a rattling hiss, the creature’s lips drew back and a secondary, inner jaw projected out, puncturing the helmet with a sickening crack.

Anakin was almost through the door. He just needed a little more time. He could sense the….was it an animal? It didn’t seem like one...gathering itself to spring, still dodging the shots of the clones. They were running into a problem now, it had positioned itself in such a way that they risked hitting each other in a crossfire if it moved the wrong direction. Had it done so by coincidence, or on purpose? It was to be fervently hoped that it was the former and not the latter.

He felt a flash of warning seconds before he heard O’Sev shout, “Commander, look out!”
The padawan whirled, yanking his lightsaber from the door. The creature leapt from the top of the console, twisting at the last moment so that its powerful legs caught O’Sev, who’d been approaching from the other side, in a vicious blow to the throat. O’Sev fell back against the control panel with a gurgle.

Anakin struck, fury and horror and a kind of claustrophobia winding together and adding weight to his swing. Birdlike, the creature hopped back with an alarmed screech, bobbing its elongated head from side to side. The Jedi advanced again, waving his blade in front of him.

“Out the door, go!” he shouted, and the remaining three clones began the nerve-wracking process of squeezing through the hole he had carved in the door. The abominable creature dove forward again, taking a glancing blow to the elbow. Its exoskeleton was clearly sturdier than it looked. Anakin threw his mechanical arm up, catching a wild swing from the creature, and brought his lightsaber down again.

This time, the lightsaber sheared through exoskeleton, muscle, and bone. The creature’s arm hit the deck with a faint thud. Shrieking in pain and anger, it leaped back up onto the console, claws piercing O’Sev’s armor, then scrambled up into a ventilation shaft.

The deck lurched beneath their feet suddenly as the mechanized computer voice emotionlessly proclaimed that sublight engines one through four were coming online, and that power was being rerouted from life support.

“Back to the shuttle!” Anakin shouted, scanning the ceiling lest the devilish creature jump out once more. He stayed back as a rearguard, shepherding Ricochet, Nix, and Drop out ahead of him. The journey back to the hangars was silent and tense, with weapons raised at every little sound. Drop very nearly incinerated a small astromech droid that exited the co*ckpit and watched them.

Left behind in the life support chamber, O’Sev slumped over the control board, lifeless. When the ship shook again, he slid off the console, and his hand brushed one of the controls, activating the logs Talo had been reading. As Anakin and the surviving clones fled to their shuttle, the ship’s comm systems echoed the words that would haunt them for months afterwards.

“Final report of the exploration vessel Kiva. Second officer reporting. The other members of the crew are dead. Cargo and droids destroyed. If you’re receiving this transmission, make no attempt to board this ship. It’s still aboard, and it will kill you. I should reach the frontier in a few weeks. With any luck, I’ll be able to contact home from there. This is Weaver, last survivor of the Kiva, signing off.”

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

For a few moments, Vader remained in the memory, unaware of his surroundings. Gradually, he came to the realization that there had been a second pair of eyes in his mind, a presence that was not normally there. With an effort, he returned his focus to the present and looked down. His son was staring at him, wide-eyed and pale. He had unconsciously tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder, and he could feel Luke shaking.

“You…” he rasped, disorientation coming out as irritation, “Were not meant to see that.”

“I wasn’t trying to!” Luke retorted, gasping. “You were...remembering...very loud!” He pulled away -- leading Vader to realize how close he’d pulled him before -- and took a few deep breaths.
“That was...you were so…”

“We will not speak of it,” his father answered sternly. He was not about to dredge up Anakin Skywalker’s past now. Luke shouldn’t have seen any of it. But now he was going to have questions, and Vader wasn’t going to be able to fend them off with menacing looks and stern silence forever.

“It didn’t look quite like the...other ones,” Luke persisted cautiously, “Was it the same species?”

At this, Vader hesitated. He let his hands fall to his sides and murmured, “I do not know.”

Well then. That was rather more ominous an answer than Luke had been hoping for. He slid away another step to give himself space to breathe, working on centering himself in the Force. He was moderately successful, more so than previously, at any rate, and the claustrophobic sense of panic bled away into the sour aftertaste of a bad dream. Something felt different, quieter. Luke turned and peered out through the transparisteel doors.

“The wind has stopped,” he remarked quietly.

That probably meant that the rest of the snow would ease soon as well. Which, in turn, meant that the soldiers from the Executor would be arriving before long. Luke was deeply uneasy about that, but he knew that it was as much the idea of going into combat side-by-side with his enemies as much as the thought of walking into the nest of the creatures. He stood staring at the gently drifting snowflakes for a few moments, trying to force his mind onto other tracks. Briefly, he contemplated making some offhand remark about snow being beautiful when it wasn’t trying to kill you, just to see if Vader would ask what he meant. He discarded the idea. Darth Vader did not seem like the type of man to reminisce or ask about others’ past experiences, and as his mind was pretty thoroughly occupied at the moment, Luke doubted his father would even notice him talking.

A murmur of voices filled the lobby suddenly as the patrons were ushered back from the other floors and study rooms where they’d been confined before. Brask was directing them, still shaking and relying on the other remaining stormtroopers to keep them contained. Some of them were clutching bags and coats, all of them looked concerned or bewildered. Luke blinked and realized that Brask was beginning the evacuation. He stepped back and away from the doors, clearing a path for the mix of species heading out into the cold. Not one of them turned to look at him or Vader.

Brask stopped and saluted. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down several times as he waited for Vader to acknowledge him. When Vader rather irritably demanded an update, he relayed that he had made contact with the Executor, and the admiral in turn had contacted Brask’s local superiors and ordered them to begin clearing the city.
“W-we have established routes, sir, protocols for big storms or the occasional reactor failure,” Brask stammered, “The evacuation shouldn’t take more than four hours.”

“You have two.” Vader hissed.
Brask paled and scurried away to hasten the departure the second he was dismissed.

The nervous crowd continued to push through the doors and out into the snow, dispersing to speeders and public transports under the watch of the soldiers. Muffled shouts and the distant echo of a comm broadcast suggested that the city officials were already doing the same in the rest of the settlement. Bringing up the rear in the library were Tars, Heloise, and Aeshpe.

“Will I be needed here, sir?” Tars asked. He was eager to help, but reluctant to stay, primarily owing to concern for his family. But if the General-who-wasn’t-a-General-anymore asked it of him, he was ready to march with the stormtroopers. And it wasn’t even for nostalgia or old loyalties. Vader and the boy had saved his daughter’s life. He owed them.

But Vader shook his head decisively. “Your presence is unnecessary,” he said flatly. “If you wish to make yourself useful, ensure the cooperation of the patrons.”
There was a glimmer of interest in the Force at this, coming from Luke. Vader filed it away for later contemplation.

Tars looked almost surprised, but he straightened and saluted. “Yes sir!” he barked, and turned quickly to help Brask usher the others out.

Heloise stopped next to Luke and took his hands in her own for a moment. “Thank you,” she said earnestly, “For what you did today. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Luke swallowed around an unexpected lump in his throat and nodded to the older woman. She smiled at him and let go, moving to join her husband. Aeshpe glanced at her parents, then stuck out a hand awkwardly. Luke shook it with the same uncomfortable look she wore.

“Guess this is it,” Aeshpe said, and they both knew she still suspected he was going to be killed. This was a last goodbye for both of them. “We’re heading out over the bridges, so Mom is going to take your rental speeder back. Just tell us which one it is and we can return it. And,” she coughed nervously, “I’ll get your droid out of the weather. Guess he’s got to be evacuated too, right?”

“Yeah,” Luke made a half-grin and ducked his head. “Be prepared for him to yell at you a little. If you don’t understand binary you’ll be fine, but fair warning: he swears like a spacer. I don’t know where he picked it up.”

Aeshpe grinned back and shook his hand one more time. “Well, Luke Skywalker, it’s been….interesting. I’m glad I met you but, no offense, I kind of hope we don’t run into each other again.”

This time Luke laughed. “No offense taken, I attract mishaps,” he answered. Then he released her hand and watched her go. Well, he’d managed to save someone, at least, from this horrible adventure. He couldn’t regret that. There was enough to regret about this series of events already.

Luke glanced back at his father, who appeared to be watching the patrons impassively, but Luke sensed that he was the one being watched. That was something he had already figured out he would have to get used to. Vader probably didn’t trust him not to try to escape yet. Which Luke didn’t really blame him for. It would be the smartest thing to do, after all.
But there was a spark, not much more than a faint glow in his father's heart, that Luke had been blind to before. And if there was even the slightest chance that someone like Darth Vader could return to light after clinging to darkness, then no one was beyond hope.
Well, Luke thought after a second, I’m not so sure about the Emperor. Or Jabba the Hutt. I suppose you have to actually want to come back, first.
So Luke would do what he could to nurture that little glimmer of light, to coax it back into life so he could see whether Anakin Skywalker would ever return. And that was helping the Rebellion still, in a way.

A shuttle from the Executor arrived after the library had been empty for nearly ten minutes. It set down just a few yards from the library, on what looked like flat snow. The landing struts sank through the powdery mixture, one finding purchase on duracrete pavement, another precariously balanced on packed snow, and a third smashing through the fountain and its Toydarian cherub statue with a crunch.

Twelve men, an assortment of SCAR troopers and flametroopers, exited the craft quickly and split into two groups. Eight began setting up crates from which they took Oppressor flamethrowers and several extra canisters of accelerant. The other four hastened into the library and stood to attention before Vader. Luke recognized one as a “stormsurgeon” field medic by the bronze pauldron on his shoulder and the pack he wore.

“The contact on the surface sent us the coordinates of the target, sir,” the SCAR trooper at the lead announced crisply, “We are ready to mobilize on your orders.”

Luke physically jolted. “Sergeant Kreel?” he blurted out, shocked.
He could feel Kreel’s surprise upon seeing him, but the man remained locked in place, and did not even turn his head.

“Antin,” Vader said, ignoring Luke’s outburst, “See to the boy.”

The medic nodded sharply and stepped forward. Briefly, Luke fought the urge to dodge out of reach. But all things considered, hiding from a medic by stepping behind Darth Vader would probably raise too many questions he wasn’t ready to answer.
And it would probably annoy his father, which was not a wise idea.

Antin pulled a scanner from his bag and ran it over Luke briefly. If he had any opinion on the overall state of Luke’s health, he didn’t say, but even with the helmet it was clear that he was giving the torn synthskin on Luke’s prosthetic hand a dubious look.

“You’ll need to remove the shirt,” he announced, holding up a bacta spray.

Luke balked at this. He’d been very cooperative so far, but disrobing in any form in front of enemy soldiers -- at least two of which had personally almost killed him in the past -- was something that sent all kinds of error messages through his mind.

“Skywalker,” Vader rumbled. There was a warning in his mechanized voice.

And I’m back to just “Skywalker” again, Luke mused sourly. He slipped out of the torn jacket and two long-sleeved shirts with rather poor grace and scowled at the medic.

Unless you would prefer to be openly acknowledged as my son in front of people you do not trust, I will continue to refer to you as Skywalker, his father’s “voice” broke into his thoughts with an accompanying emotion annoyingly similar to amusem*nt. When the ship has been dealt with, we will discuss the matter further.

That was something he hadn’t stopped to consider. Given his strange and uncertain status as “prisoner with sort-of privileges”, Luke had figured his future would mostly entail being kept under lock and key, out of sight on the Executor or some dark Imperial fortress unless he -- Force forbid -- turned to the dark side. He probably should have given some thought to the political side of things, but considering their very disparate allegiances, it had seemed more likely that Vader would try to keep their relationship hidden to avoid complications.

His father’s suggestion -- and even more than that his own reaction to being referred as simply “Skywalker” -- surprised him.
If Vader were to openly acknowledge him, the word would eventually get back to the public, though he hoped that Artoo would reach High Command with his message first. There would likely be at least a little chaos.
Luke wondered if that might be an incentive for his father to do it.

And on the other hand, did he want to be acknowledged by the man he’d been spending the last three years running from? Political and moral complications aside, he would not deny that after Bespin there was a part of him that wondered if Vader was ashamed of having a Jedi child, or embarrassed by his existence. Nothing about this day seemed typical for Vader, leaving Luke to wonder whether that offer would be extended the following day. Provided they all lived that long.

“Alright,” Antin muttered, barely picked up by his helmet’s speakers. “I’m putting a spray on this -- should help with some of the lacerations, too. But since this is an internal injury-” he dug around in his pack for a moment and came up with a small, clear bottle filled with a muddy looking liquid.

Oh. Great. Bactade. Luke tried not to show his disgust visibly. While the drinkable form of bacta did its job well, it was fairly unpopular, given that it tasted disgusting. Luke suspected that Master Yoda’s rootleaf stew was probably worse, though, and he’d survived on that for longer than expected. He could handle a little drinkable slime.
With a carefully neutral expression, Luke took the bottle from the stormsurgeon and downed the contents in two gulps. As expected, it was vile. But it would help to actually repair the damage, while the spray on his skin would mostly just numb the nerves around his ribs for an hour or two.

“Sir!” one of the flametroopers who had been setting up the gear outside suddenly appeared in the walkway. “The all-terrain vehicle the security forces left behind was damaged when it went over the barrier, sir. The track the tread runs on is bent.”

Vader swept past him, and, not wanting to be left with Kreel, Luke followed, throwing on his shirts and jacket in an undignified rush.
“We will take the shuttle,” Vader snapped. “Load the men and weapons.” Then he turned to look down at Luke.

“Find your gear, Skywalker,” he said sternly, “We have none to spare for you.”
Of course, he could have made one of the troopers give their gear to Luke, but he needed them to be in top form, if for no other reason than to protect his son.
But Luke didn’t need to know that at the moment.

Luke made a face, but went back into the foyer to search for his coats and goggles. Hopefully all those pocket warmers Hobbie and Zev had given him were still working. In the hasty evacuation of the patrons, the coat-rooms had been pretty well ransacked, and some things had been left behind, while others were scattered about. Luke found his hat up on a shelf just out of his reach -- and spent an embarrassing two seconds trying to grab it before remembering to use the Force -- and his goggles underneath a deactivated maintenance droid. He was sifting through a pile of discarded jackets for his own heavy coat and vest when he sensed someone in the doorway behind him.

“Well well,” Kreel sounded smug. “Your luck finally ran out, I see.”

Luke’s hands stilled on the cloth. “What do you want, Kreel?” he snapped.
Memories of Nar Shadda threatened to creep up out of the place he’d hidden them in his mind. He flexed his fingers for a moment, as if to reassure himself that he wasn’t in magbinders.

“We’re leaving,” the sergeant answered flatly, “You have ten seconds to get the rest of your gear or you’re loading up without it.”

Luke hissed something mildly vulgar under his breath and dug through the clothes until he felt a faint residual warmth. Someone had stolen the majority of the pocket warmers -- not that he blamed them for it -- but there were still a few in the pockets of his two other layered coats. There wasn’t time to look for his gloves. Luke snatched two from the floor at random, attempting to ignore how mismatched they were, and pushed past Kreel.

“So.” The SCAR trooper eased up to keep pace with Luke, seeming to enjoy his frustration. “You’re being unusually cooperative. Did you defect, or did getting caught take the wind out of your sails?”

Luke pulled up short. “What?!” he sputtered. “No I didn’t defect! I’m just…” he cast about for an answer that wasn’t there’s not a snowball’s chance in Mos Eisley that my father is going to let me go. “I’m just trying to survive the day!” he bit out.

“Night.”

“What?” Luke blinked.

Sergeant Kreel gestured outside. “It’s night now. And cooperation is likely to keep you alive longer than defiance...but not by much. A word of warning, boy, don’t cross Lord Vader. His patience is not infinite, and your powers aren’t reason enough for leniency.”

A frown creased Luke’s forehead and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Believe me,” he said softly, trying to keep the bitterness of Bespin out of his voice, “I know.”

“Doubt it,” Kreel snorted, and a thread of annoyance wove through his words. “Or else you and your Rebel friends wouldn’t keep pushing matters.” He pushed ahead and as he passed, Luke caught a stray thought from the man’s mind. --could’ve wrapped this up years ago if the stupid kid had surrendered on Vrogas Vas!

Luke was startled. What did Sergeant Kreel know about Vrogas Vas? Apparently not much if he thought that Luke had come face-to-face with Vader there. There were things about the Vrogas Vas Incident that still bothered Luke: the extraordinarily high number of soldiers they’d lost, the faint and blurry vision of his father and Obi-wan as a young boy and a young Knight respectively, the shuttle crash. He wondered if there would ever come a day when he could have a civil conversation with his father about it and get some answers. But for now he feared what Vader might say: that the lives of his friends meant less than nothing to him, or that he’d been out to kill Luke that day.

The library doors slid shut behind them, and the soft snap had a sense of finality to it. Luke suspected he wouldn’t be coming back to the library on Mygeeto. The distant roar of an engine, not a speeder or a TIE, caught his attention. Squinting through his goggles, he could just barely make out the shape of his X-Wing, making for the atmosphere.

“Sir!” Sergeant Kreel pointed. “Rebel ship spotted!”

“Let it pass,” Vader did not even look up. “It is unmanned.”

Luke sensed a calculating stare from behind the mask and returned it as best he could. Then Vader turned and boarded the shuttle with a flourish meant to shake the snow from his cape more than anything else. Luke hesitated, not sure whether he was about to be confined to the larger part of the shuttle with the strike team or not. The longer he delayed, however, the sharper the sense of impatience he felt from Vader grew.

The strike team was surprised, he could tell, when he decided to bite the proverbial bullet and followed the dark lord in. Somehow the cramped surroundings seemed to emphasize Vader’s height and make him more intimidating than usual. Luke stopped a foot or so away and looked around uncertainly.

“Come here, Luke.”

Luke suppressed a prickle of unease and shuffled closer, glancing over his shoulder in case any of the SCAR troopers or flametroopers had entered and heard.
He tried to calm to nervous fluttering in his stomach as Vader took his lightsaber from his belt. Was he really going to give it back now, in the transport?

“Understand that I am returning this to you only so that you will be better protected when we attack the Kiva,” his father warned. “If you at any time attack me or my men, you will very quickly regret it.”

“I understand,” Luke said in a barely audible whisper.
Vader took Luke’s hand and placed the hilt in it, but did not immediately let go.

“This weapon is your life,” he said sternly. “Do try not to give it up rashly again, my son.”

Luke blinked and fought down a sudden inappropriate urge to grin. His father would probably not appreciate being told that Luke had once heard Obi-wan say something similar. Or, for that matter, being told that he was showing a surprising amount of concern for a Sith Lord. If he wasn’t careful, someone might actually start thinking he cared about Luke.

But Luke managed to keep his face straight more easily than expected when he thought about where they were heading.
“I’ll be careful, Father,” he said quietly.

Luke clipped the hilt back to his belt, unable to suppress an undeniable sense of relief once he felt its familiar weight. At the very least, it provided him with a small modicum of freedom, or at least the illusion of freedom. He shifted his weight as the rest of the strike team assembled and the shuttle lifted off, and glanced up at Vader from the corner of his eye. “What’s the plan of attack?”

“Methodical extermination,” the Sith growled. “Everything that moves, dies.”

At least one flametrooper made an elated hiss that his helmet mic, to his immediate dismay, picked up and broadcasted.

“This once, I can’t help but agree,” Luke muttered under his breath.

“It will not be the last time you do so, I suspect,” Vader replied, somewhat ominously.

Don’t stress about it now, you can worry about keeping your soul intact -- and your father’s soul -- after you’ve made sure you aren’t about to die, Luke told himself, and crossed his arms, unconsciously mimicking his father’s stance.
There was a warning in the Force of danger, growing stronger the closer they got to the Kiva.

“Lord Vader,” the pilot’s voice crackled over the ship’s speakers, “We’ve reached the coordinates given, but there is no ship visible. Just a hill of ice. Scanners are picking up life signs, however.”

“Land the shuttle,” Vader answered curtly.

“May the Force be with us,” Luke gulped.

“Indeed.” Vader took hold of his shoulder and pushed him out ahead of him. The rest of the strike team hurried close behind, weapons raised.

Even with his extra layers, Luke was bitterly cold. The hill rose up before them, a grey shadow in the semi-darkness. Two scouts went ahead with scanners, looking for an entrance. Of course, there was no guarantee that the shuttle had landed in the same place that Qeward’s expedition had entered. The shifting snow had all but obliterated any possible tracks that Pike or Forien’s party might have left behind.

Eager to get the misadventure over with -- But what then, Skywalker? Off to the Executor in the faint hope that Vader will still be feeling merciful tomorrow? -- Luke stretched out with the Force, seeking any trace of either Pike or the men who had come with Brask and Forien to find Pike. Faintly, in his mind’s eye, he saw the all-terrain transport pull up from the lower levels of the city, ploughing into the hill. He could almost hear the ring of metal and ice echoing.

As if in a daze, Luke shuffled away from the group, one hand held out in front of him. They had come this way, he was sure of it. There were echoes, like footprints in the Force, guiding him to an indentation in the snow.
Dimly, he was aware of one of Kreel’s men starting after him, probably to force him back to the group at gunpoint. Someone -- he wasn’t paying enough attention to see who, but he suspected it was Vader -- put out a hand, stopping the man. Luke ignored this to crouch and lay his hand against the ice. Something jolted him out of the visions of the past and he shot upright with a gasp.

“Focus!” Vader snapped from somewhere behind him.

“They’re alive!” Luke called back, stumbling away from what he guessed was the snow-filled entrance to the Kiva, “I can sense Lt. Forien and the other six down below!”

Two flametroopers moved forward to melt the snow in the indentation, revealing a ragged hole leading into a tunnel of ice. It had clearly been made with someone tall in mind, likely the Ithorian, Qeward. This was somewhat fortunate, as Vader made it very clear that he would be going first. As the strike team checked their weapons and prepared to enter the tunnel, the two flametroopers who had melted the snow were pulled aside.

To their surprise, Lord Vader gestured to the Rebel they assumed was a prisoner -- who needed handcuffs when Lord Vader was there? Nobody would be fool enough to attempt escape! -- and announced that they were to remain with him at all times.

“Commander Skywalker is to remain alive and unharmed for the duration of the mission. You are to guard his person at all times,” he said. Then, in a dangerous tone, he added, “I trust you are both aware of the consequences of failure.”

Luke shifted awkwardly as the two flametroopers both nodded with a curt “Yes, Lord Vader” and threw them a lopsided grin when Vader’s back was turned.
“Well. This should be interesting,” he said in a falsely cheerful voice. Maybe if he fooled them into thinking he wasn’t afraid, he’d fool himself too.

He took a deep breath, and followed Vader into the dark.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

The tunnel was just wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
Luke tried to keep just ahead of the stormtroopers and just behind his father, in case he had to point something out or make an observation without alerting anyone to his connection with their leader. The pocket-warmers stuffed into his sleeves did little to alleviate the chill seeping into his bones from the walls. Was it all the ice, or was it fear? Luke could not deny a certain level of terror he was trying to suppress at the thought of facing more of those monstrous creatures head-on after having been helpless and hunted by them.

This thought triggered another memory and he stiffened. He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again quickly. There was nothing he could say out loud to get Vader’s attention that wouldn’t be either awkward or suspicious. Of course, he supposed he could address him as “Lord Vader” to avoid questions, but something in him balked at that. Most likely the fact that he was diametrically opposed to the Empire and wasn’t too keen on playing along with their hierarchy.
Or perhaps, a stray thought whispered uncomfortably in the back of his mind, he was beginning to get too used to calling the man “Father”, and didn’t like the idea of retreating behind formality.

There was another option, he supposed. Though Vader might not appreciate it, as he seemed focused on the path ahead of them. Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, Luke thought of their connection in the Force, picturing it like a thread linking one to the other. He reached for that thread, and imagined plucking it experimentally -- not enough to be an actual conversation, just enough to get his attention. Hopefully.

Vader did not stop moving, but there was a tension about his shoulders that, incredibly, had not been there before. The shadows around them seemed to bend out of his way and pool at Luke’s feet as they walked -- he hoped this was just his imagination -- and he felt the Sith’s attention on him like a pair of fiery eyes.

What is it, Luke? He was terse, focused on other things.

The creatures, I just remembered something, it was not so much like stuttering, as it was in his own mind, but Luke’s thoughts were a mixture of words and images overlaying them from memories. They hunt by sound. They’re going to hear us! They’re going to hear you!

Vader stopped short. Luke pulled up quickly before walking into his back and course-corrected so that he came up by his right elbow instead.
“You might have mentioned that before,” his father hissed, barely picked up by the vocoder.

“I didn’t think we were actually going to go after the things!” Luke whispered back, agitated.

Vader turned and gestured. “Kreel,” he said sharply.
The soldier pushed past the two flametroopers set to guard Luke and stood attentively.
“The hostile organisms hunt by sound,” Vader ground out, “Alert your men to exercise stealth if they do not wish to die immediately.”

There was a very tense silence in the tunnel after that. While Luke could move fairly quietly, given his lack of armor and lighter tread, he was startled to find that his father was nearly soundless as they pushed on. Somehow he had either made his breathing shallow to the point of unnoticeable, or else he had a way of muting his respirator.
A faint and unsettling memory of Bespin circled Luke’s thoughts, and he found himself thinking Oh, so that’s how he disappeared on me in the control room.

The walls became slick as they progressed, and water pooled and splashed around their boots where the ice was melting. Hadn’t Tover said something about the climate being different inside the ship? It did seem to be getting warmer. The darkness resolved itself from an inky black to a broken grey ahead of them where the hull of the ship had been breached.
They had found the Kiva.

A fetid humidity wafted out of the impromptu doorway, scorched at the edges by whatever tool Qeward and his expedition had used to cut through the hull. There was a faint glow, broken in uneven intervals where someone had set up lights. Most of them had fallen and lay among unidentifiable debris. Given that they were still in good working order, it was most likely that Lt. Forien and his party had brought them. There was no other sign of Forien or the other six men.

Darth Vader ducked through the entryway and looked around him, one hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, before motioning the others through. Although he could sense life forms throughout the ship, most of them gave off a feeling of dormancy. The technology around him was severely damaged. Some of it had been destroyed by fire, some by damage sustained in the crash that had brought the ship to Mygeeto. There was also clear water damage left from where ice used to be. As such, it took him a few minutes to be able to readily identify their location.

“It’s smaller than I thought it’d be,” Luke murmured from behind him.

“That is because we are only on the uppermost deck,” Vader replied in a low voice. He waved the other soldiers ahead, and they spread out to clear the area.

Luke drifted a few steps away from the group, hastily shadowed by the two flametroopers, and crouched to examine the debris.
“Take it easy, guys,” he murmured over his shoulder, “I’m not going to run off. Not in a place like this.”

After a beat of silence, one of them spoke up. “That’s...that’s fair. But we’re still not letting you out of our sight.”

Luke picked up one of the lights left behind and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t blame you. This is definitely a “safety in numbers” situation.”
That wasn’t what they’d meant and he knew it, but the subtle teasing made him feel a little better.

He could still sense Forien and the others below, though something was...off...about their life signatures. It wasn’t like Qeward, Solli, or Zalbeth’s had been before the organisms hatched from their chests, but it still felt somehow wrong.

The group moved slowly through blackened and crushed sections, speared through with ice that was slowly melting, that were arranged in vaguely chamber-like partitions. These had likely been the crew quarters at one point. The further past the scorched shells they got, the warmer the atmosphere became until it was very nearly a comfortable climate. Luke’s boots squelched with each step, and it began to appear that not all of the sound was caused by water dripping from the walls. There was something sticky in the mixture, not unlike the substance the creatures in the library had either drooled or secreted. Overall, not a good sign.

Something moved in Luke’s peripheral vision and half the soldiers whirled, blasters and rifles raised. Kreel held up a hand.
“It’s alright,” he hissed, “Just an old droid of some kind.”

The outdated astromech unit had long since deactivated or shut itself off. It was still plugged into a wall terminal, rusted in place at an awkward angle. The droid’s dome had swiveled, just an inch or so, in their direction. As it was not active, the nearest they could guess was that the sudden increase in “passengers” aboard the Kiva had shifted the weight of the deck a little, just enough to affect the droid’s position.
Or so went Kreel’s theory.

Luke leaned over to one of the two flametroopers “guarding” him. “Keep an eye on the ceiling,” he muttered. “Ledges, cracks, anything wide enough to perch on or hang from. Just in case.”
He didn’t sense any creatures in the immediate area, but the whole of the Kiva felt shadowed in fear and dread -- to say nothing of the icy shadows emanating from his own father -- and he wasn’t going to take the chance that his perception might be off.

“Keep moving,” Kreel pushed past the three of them, following Vader. He was tense, not that Luke blamed him for that, and his hand hovered near his belt. He still carried a lightsaber.
Luke decided he didn’t particularly care for that.

Vader moved ahead of them suddenly, quickening his pace, and the others hastened to keep up. He held out a hand, stopping them, and ducked through a ragged hole in a wall of rust. They all heard the lightsaber ignite, and saw it giving off a faint red glow through the hole. Without really thinking it through, Luke ducked out from under Kreel’s sudden and unwelcome hand on his shoulder and slipped through the hole. His guards rather miserably trailed behind.

Most of the chamber was wrecked beyond recognition, but four bodies on the floor marked what it was easily enough for Vader, and for Luke who had inadvertently glimpsed the memory. The corpses had long since decayed to skeletons within their armor, some of which had very obviously been disturbed by either the crash or scavengers. Briefly, Vader stooped and took a helmet from the floor, brushing off layers of grime and slime to reveal the serial number along the side.

“Is it Talo?” Luke whispered, eyes tracing the hole punched through the front of the helmet.

Wordlessly, Vader nodded, and, with an uncharacteristic gentleness or reverence he placed the helmet on the mangled control console. Luke observed this in silence, then asked, even more quietly than before, “Should we put the other three up there with him?”

Vader turned, surprised, but Luke was utterly sincere. For a moment the Sith entertained the idea that perhaps the pilots of the Rebellion treated the helmets of fallen comrades the way his small, doomed band had, but then discarded the idea as irrelevant. He gave a stiff nod and moved to the second body. Tip.
The helmet was cracked in two, the head missing. It appeared to have happened years ago, but Vader’s blood boiled at the thought of it and he could not for certain say why. He set the pieces as closely together as he could manage on the console.

Luke pulled up Eights’s helmet, wincing at the grinning skull beneath it, and took a moment to gingerly arrange the clone’s arms across his chest in a more peaceful pose before he put the helmet beside Tip and Talo’s.
He stopped before touching O’Sev, frowning softly. Evidently having no such reservations, his father reached past him and carefully removed O’Sev’s helmet. It went up onto the console beside the other three.

Luke looked to his father, wondering. They were just going to blow up the ship when all the monsters were dead, so what was the purpose of this? Closure of some kind? Did Siths even want closure for things they’d done or experienced? There must have been some other purpose behind it.

“We still have to save Forien and the others,” Luke whispered at last, reluctant to interrupt...whatever Vader was thinking about.

The massive warrior straightened his shoulders and made a non-committal sound. “I do not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation, my son,” he returned, equally quiet. “If they are compromised, I will do what is necessary to prevent the spread of the parasite. You are not to intervene or hinder my men, is that understood, Luke?”

Luke winced, and his shoulders fell. He knew or could easily guess Vader’s meaning, and frankly it turned his stomach.
“You won’t even try to save them?” he asked in a very small voice.

He already knew the answer to that. He’d known for years that Vader did not waste pity or mercy, even on wounded or dying men. Luke bit down on the inside of his cheek, almost hard enough to bleed, and suppressed an awful thought rising in his mind:
What if I was infected? Guess that means you wouldn’t try to save me, huh? Don’t know what I expected from a Sith.
Luke fought back a stab of discouragement and was surprised at his own reaction. How had a few days -- if even that -- in this nightmare situation so distorted his perception of Darth Vader that he was surprised by this?

Or considering earlier, you might be the only one he ever would save, no matter who else died in the process, his thoughts whispered to him, and given the circ*mstances that was almost as disturbing.

In reply to his former question -- and hopefully not to his thought, considering it had been shielded -- Vader exited the former life-support room and rejoined the soldiers, pushing aside the two flametroopers who had gathered at the hole to wait for Luke.

“Make for the hatch to the fore cargo hold,” Vader snapped. “All weapons at the ready, motion sensors activated. It is time to end this.”

They found the first one right at the edge of the hatch.

It was a stormtrooper, one of the ones Forien had taken with him. The entire front of his helmet had been punctured, the edges of the hole melted inwards and scarcely visible under a crablike creature that had clamped itself around the unfortunate soldier’s head. Luke moved forward to check the man’s pulse, though he could sense his life force flickering weakly. He got one step in before Vader caught his arm and yanked him back.

“Watch him,” he commanded Sergeant Kreel, then moved towards the compromised stormtrooper, lightsaber ignited.

Luke shut his eyes and turned away. This wasn’t right, wasn’t the Jedi way. Surely there had to be some way of saving the-
The stormtrooper’s life was abruptly snuffed out, coinciding with a hissing squeal from the creature attached to his face. Luke swallowed down bile rising in his throat and clenched his fists. Try to understand your father, try to save him if you can, but never, never forget how dangerous he is, he thought.

“Anyone compromised by the parasite is already dead,” Vader announced emotionlessly. “The survivor of the previous expedition who was questioned suggested that this form implants its eggs within the victim. They hatch within twenty-four hours. Any person or persons found in this manner are to be immediately neutralized.”

There was a shiver of unease that ran through the party, but Luke sensed that it was more to do with a suppressed horror at the creatures themselves, not the order to indiscriminately kill monster and victim alike. He didn’t doubt that they’d received that sort of order before, anyway. Luke knew he wouldn’t wish a chest-bursting alien parasite on anyone -- well, perhaps on the Emperor. Possibly also Jabba the Hutt -- but it still didn’t feel right to just kill them before seeing if there was a way to kill the parasite before it was full-grown. But then, wouldn't that condemn them to excruciating pain and, unless a cure was found, death?
There wasn’t a good answer that he could see, and it frustrated him.

Belatedly, Luke realized that the SCAR troopers and flametroopers were dropping down through the hatch, and that Vader had already gone down. Kreel shoved him forward, probably annoyed that he’d been set to guard a spaced-out Jedi with the two flametroopers.

“Move it, Skywalker,” Kreel grumbled. “We’re not here for you to daydream.”

On-edge, tired, and irritated, Luke took the tiniest bit of petty satisfaction in digging in his heels and muttering, “You’re not my father,”
Childish? Oh certainly. But the important part was that he knew that Vader had heard them both as they came down the ladder and there was a split second of bewildered and exasperated amusem*nt before Vader was focused on the mission again.
At least he knew he could catch the Sith off-guard still. That might come in handy one day.

Four feet from the end of the ladder, one of the SCAR troopers found the next body. Just beyond him were two more, propped against a slimy wall in a fading circle of light left by emergency lamps on their last hour of battery. All three wore the same macabre headgear as their unlucky comrade. Sergeant Kreel stepped up and, with a muted groan of disgust, placed a single blaster bolt through each one’s head. Blood, or something like it, sprayed from the creatures, catching the wall and Kreel. He cursed loudly, leaping back and shaking his arm wildly. Only a few droplets of the acidic blood had caught him, but they’d eaten through armor in seconds, exposing wire and circuitry.

There was a dry, scuttling noise from the shadows, and instantly the soldiers had their rifles, blasters, and flamethrowers raised. Four of the face-hugging monstrosities launched themselves up from discarded crates and holes in the floor, but they had lost the element of surprise. The flametrooper to Luke’s right caught one in a spurt of fire as it leaped. Hissing, the facehugger retreated.
On his other side, a thoroughly peeved Kreel swung his prosthetic arm, catching a second creature with an audible thwack and knocking it to the floor.

The third either had not realized how many people were in the party or had very little brain to begin with. It was peppered with blaster fire as it leaped, and only its size and relative speed kept it from being utterly blown apart then and there. Bleeding acid sluggishly, it pulled itself back behind a crate to hide. One of the flametroopers simply kicked the crate over and finished it off with one shot.

The first facehugger had recovered during this time, and despite its injuries managed one final burst of strength, attaching itself to the head of the same flametrooper that had shot it the first time. Kreel put a bolt through them both before the flametrooper had even hit the ground. This time Luke didn’t flinch, though his mouth tightened into a disapproving line.

“Watch it,” he warned, and whipped around to impale a fourth facehugger on the end of his lightsaber. “You’re making the blood spray.”

The last of the creatures, the one that Kreel had merely stunned before, got up on wobbly appendages, but Darth Vader brought his boot down hard, crushing the creature. “Burn the corpses,” he ordered.

Luke did not switch off his lightsaber, but he held it loosely, eyes scanning the darkness. The walls were all covered in layers of some kind of organic slime, most of it dried into strange growths and protrusions. It resembled the creatures in the library enough that Luke suspected his eyes would play tricks on him in the low light.
“Right,” he muttered under his breath, “Forget eyes, use the Force then, I guess.”

“Correct,” Vader gave the barest of nods beside him. “If there are any of the larger parasites present, you will sense them before you see them. Do not let your guard down.”

“Larger parasites?” Luke’s remaining flametrooper/bodyguard whispered to one of the SCAR troopers, “I hope not.”

Luke turned and made a sympathetic grimace in their direction. “Yeah, well, we’ve only found four out of seven bodies so far. Not to be the voice of bad news, but something could potentially hatch before we get to it.”
He hoped it wouldn’t, but the plain fact of the matter was that they simply did not know enough about the beings to be able to say for certain how long they would take to hatch, and whether climate or host species would slow or accelerate the process.

They progressed towards the middle of the cargo hold, and despite the arctic temperatures outside, it had become warm enough that Luke was sweating now. He removed his hat and gloves, shoving them into his many pockets, and continued to pick his way through the squelching mess along the floor. He kept a close eye on Vader, both visually and with the Force, knowing that if it came to another fight he’d be taking his cues from the older Force wielder.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, he found himself quietly fuming. Why am I just going along with this?

Because you gave your word, his father broke into his thoughts with a slightly annoyed flash of emotion, and Luke realized he’d been complaining over the open bond. Or perhaps because you are beginning to understand that this is where you are meant to be.

In the middle of a nest of nightmare monsters? Luke was being sarcastic and they both knew it. Surprisingly, though there was a twinge of displeasure over the bond, Vader ignored the impertinence.

No. Facing your enemies at your father’s side.

Luke had no idea how to respond to that. He tightened his jaw and folded his arms across his chest. There was a hint of something almost like disappointment over the bond for a moment, perhaps in response to his uncertain reaction.

As they eased further into the shadows, a stray thought occurred to Luke in the extraordinarily untimely manner of most stray thoughts, and he let it leak through the bond on a whim.

When I used to imagine doing things with my father, when I was a kid, I gotta be honest: I never pictured us doing anything like this.

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

The darkness was oppressive, heavy and warm and closing in to choke the life out of them. Or, that’s what it felt like to Luke.

They had come to a place where the floor opened up into a dark abyss, which was probably not as deep as it looked, but no one wanted to take any chances. Luke found himself edging along the side of the hole, the viscous formations on the walls behind him digging into his back and leaving strands of mucous across his jacket. Luke ignored this. He had undoubtedly seen worse. The inside of a tauntaun came to mind. A little, nonsensical part of his brain piped up to observe that it would probably be very strange and a bit difficult to explain that incident to a bunch of stoic Imperials.

He could still faintly sense Lt. Forien and the remaining two or three troopers somewhere in the vicinity, but it was getting harder to pinpoint their location. There were other life forms here, and though they felt dormant, there were enough of them to confuse Luke’s senses. His boot slipped on a slick protrusion near the base of the wall and for an instant his left foot shot out into empty space.

A heavy weight across his chest prevented the rest of his body from following, and he quickly regained his footing. A glance downwards revealed an arm that had been flung out in front of him to anchor him. Luke almost considered reaching up to touch his father’s hand on a sudden whim, if only to convey a silent thanks when words would have been too difficult and unfamiliar. But that would have raised as many questions as a verbal reply, and he refrained. Instead, he turned his head to where he was certain Vader’s eyes were, and nodded almost imperceptibly. The arm retracted and they began to move again.

“Easy,” Luke whispered to his other side, where the troopers were following, “It gets slippery here.”
He felt...something, he couldn’t readily identify the emotion, coming from Vader at this. Perhaps the man was amused by his offspring’s concern for the soldiers.

Well, it was a little ironic, when he thought about it.

Something moved in the pit below. There was a shuddering gasp from far beneath their feet, a harsh intake of air that sounded almost human. Vader held up a hand and the troopers pointed their rifles down towards the hole. But it was too dark, none of them would have been able to get a clean shot at whatever had made the sound. Luke stretched out with the Force and tried to identify what had made the noise.

He sensed fear, confusion, determination.

It was a human.

There was no way to know for certain if the human was compromised or not, but just as Luke began to think that he’d sensed this person before, they were gone. Not dead, but out of the range of his senses and somewhere further below, where the ship had dug into the earth.

Somehow, that troubled Luke as much as their surroundings. If it had been one of Forien’s party, wouldn’t they have called out upon seeing more Imperials? Or perhaps they were compromised and understood that, choosing to avoid the strike team out of either self-preservation or self-sacrifice.

Neither of these suggestions rested easily in Luke’s mind, -- or in the Force, for that matter -- and he suspected that there was something else afoot.

The strike team carefully eased the rest of the way past the pit, and Darth Vader ignited his lightsaber. For a moment, Luke twitched, hand flying to the hilt on his own belt, but he sensed no danger.

Or rather, he sensed no immediate danger. There was danger in every part of this ship, but none was in the process of trying to kill them at the moment.

It occurred to the young Jedi shortly afterwards that his father was likely just using his blade to light their way, and he felt a little sheepish for not having guessed that.

The space ahead was half-collapsed, and the strange organic growths covered much of the ceiling and walls, but the ruined hulks of long-outdated vehicles still made imposing silhouettes along the wide cargo hold. There were three visible, one of them snapped in two with either the impact of the crash or general disrepair. No one felt the need to mention that the destroyed vehicles would make ideal cover for them or the creatures they were hunting, if their intelligence was as reported.

Kreel made swift gestures and six members of the team crept ahead, weapons at the ready. A spurt of flame and a hissing squeal at odd intervals were the only hints that they’d found anything, though one of the sounds was decidedly more mechanical than organic. The slight embarrassment wafting through the Force after this sound suggested to Luke that the man had probably jumped and fired on a piece of the ship. Better safe than sorry, he supposed, although that was ammunition wasted.

After a moment, the flametrooper in the lead reappeared from behind one of the vehicles and signaled that the way was clear.

The atmosphere of the Kiva pressed in around them, fear and echoes of the ship’s history choking the air like fumes. Luke stubbornly clung to the Light as the party eased around the vehicle wrecks, letting the warmth center him, and pushed back against the darkness as best he could. Even so, he missed the shift at first. Ahead of him, Vader snarled softly and his grip on the lightsaber tightened. Wondering what, exactly, his father was reacting to -- provided it wasn’t just an outward expression of some inner thought or a general, Sithly rage, he supposed -- Luke slowed his breathing and focused on the Light again, seeking the source of the disturbance.

When he found what was amiss, a jolt of fear shot through him, unbalancing him. He’d known there was a possibility, but still he had hoped…

Luke and his remaining “bodyguard” moved quietly to where Sergeant Kreel and Darth Vader were walking, close to the head of the group. Without preamble, Luke whispered, “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

Vader ignored the sergeant and the flametrooper’s confusion at the “prisoner’s” boldness and nodded. “Yours is the greater experience regarding the matter, Skywalker. What is it that you felt?”

Really? Luke pushed away a tiny hint of annoyance, and realized he was comparing Vader’s tone to Uncle Owen, and the way the man used to make “teaching moments” out of everything. Somehow, Luke didn’t think that was how his father had meant to come across, though the idea held a certain amount of inopportune humor for him, once he got past the weird, cognitive disconnect to it.

Quietly, Luke answered. “I sense a lot of pain. Recent, but fading. And a death, though it’s a little hard to isolate in a place like this. And...and something else alive. But it was distant. I’m not sure where-”

“One of the hangars attached to this cargo bay,” Vader interrupted, tension radiating from his voice and his pose alike. “I sensed it as well. It is...unlikely that we will find and exterminate the hatchling before it molts.”

Luke shut his eyes and let out a breath. “I was afraid of that,” he admitted. “What now, F-” he cut himself off quickly and changed tack with only a slight hitch in his words. “-From what I sensed, it may not be aware of us yet, but I’m not sure we would be able to maintain the element of surprise.”

Vader did not make any outward sign that he’d noticed Luke’s slip, but there was a sharp prod at their mental bond, no doubt a warning to be more cautious.

“For now,” he replied, raising his voice slightly so that the other soldiers would hear, “Our attention is better focused on destroying the nest -- the “eggs” Tover spoke of. We will ensure the destruction of the source, and limit the possibility of further adults.”

He met Luke’s gaze with a grimness that seemed to extend beyond the mask, and both knew their thoughts ran along similar patterns. It seemed likely to them that there would already be an adult of some kind guarding at least part of the nest. Not to mention that if the hatchling they had just sensed molted before they located it, there was a distinct possibility that it would begin stalking them. Whatever they were going to do, they would have to move quickly.

Which meant risking a little more noise.

“Keep your eyes on places things could perch,” Luke whispered to the flametrooper at his side. “We might have an adult parasite in here shortly. I’ll try to warn you if I sense one, but they move fast.”

“Great,” the man gulped. “Good to know.” He tightened his grip on the flamethrower and trudged along beside the man he was supposed to guard.

For a Rebel prisoner, he certainly didn’t seem too unsettled by working with Imperials. Then again, this was a life or death situation, and a common enemy did tend to unite even old foes. Still, there was something distinctly peculiar in the way this man -- more a boy, really -- interacted with Lord Vader. A certain familiarity. There was fear, certainly, but nowhere near the proper amount one tended to have when interacting with the dark lord.

And Lord Vader, for his part, was showing either a tolerance or a lenience that was absolutely unheard-of for the Sith Lord. This was the Commander Skywalker, some of the boys had been whispering over the comms, the one Lord Vader had been hunting for three years without rest. And a Jedi, if rumors were to be believed. And yet less than twenty minutes ago he’d just witnessed Vader not only allow Skywalker to interrupt him at least once, but actually encourage him to continue. Who was this boy?

“Hey.”

The flametrooper blinked under his helmet, and realized he’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard Skywalker speaking to him. He tilted his head questioningly, unwilling to make more noise than was necessary.

“You got a name?” Luke asked with a halfhearted attempt at a friendly smile. “If we get into a scrape later, I want to be able to yell look out without six different guys wondering who I’m talking to.”

Well that was confidence-inspiring. He considered just remaining silent, but eventually shrugged and whispered, “Cutter.”

Luke nodded back. “Cutter. Okay, Cutter. Let’s try to make it out of here alive, okay?”

The cargo hold was attached to three hangars: two on either side and one set slightly below the level of the plating they stood on. The deck was still, and seemed to swallow up the noise of men in armor walking. Perhaps that was for the best. The last of the lamps used by Forien’s party flickered behind them, too far away for them to discern the shape of anything in front of them. At quietly whispered instructions from Kreel over their comms, the flametroopers flanking the party lit very small flames and allowed the glow to give them enough light to see by. For purposes of practicality, the “stormsurgeon” Antin was placed in the center of the column, just behind Luke and Cutter. He seemed more on-edge than most of the other soldiers, and Luke idly wondered if the medic had been at all disturbed by the systematic execution of the compromised victims before.

By now it had grown so warm that Luke had shrugged out of his outer coat and still felt that he was wearing too many layers. The organic resin-like material coating the walls and floors seemed to act as a kind of insulation, completely blocking arctic temperatures outside. Luke wondered if freezing temperatures really did delay the hatching of the endoparasites, and whether that meant, by extension, that heat accelerated their growth. It wasn’t a nice thought. He caught himself just before nearly walking into Vader’s back a second time as the man pulled to a halt in front of another broken place in the deck.

Keep your mind in the here and now, where it belongs, Vader reprimanded him, tense and terse even in their minds.

Luke gritted his teeth and bit back a sharp retort. He was going to have to learn to tread carefully when Vader was irate from here on out -- provided they both survived this adventure -- and his first instinct, which was to defend himself to his enemy-turned-estranged-parent, would have to be suppressed somewhat. Instead, he turned his attention to the gaping hole.

It’s warmer here. Do you think this is where Tover and the expedition found the eggs? He asked.

Were you not listening when he made his...report? Vader seemed unsure of whether to label it a report or a confession. It had been a little of both, really.

I was tired! Luke protested, forgetting his earlier resolution to avoid arguing, I still am tired, actually. But at that point I think you might’ve been the only thing holding me upright.

Had Luke been able to sift through the fog of negative emotions surrounding his father -- most of which pertained to the situation they’d walked into -- he might’ve found a miniscule thread of contented amusem*nt at the memory. But it was buried deep, and Vader’s focus was on the mission at hand.

“Sergeant,” Vader said aloud, “Send a flare down. If it is the nest, and the structure is sound, have your men proceed with explosives.”

With a faint crackling sound, the flare was activated and dropped down into the darkness. It looked to be no more than a ten foot drop at the most, covered near the bottom by a strange, hovering layer of mist. The flickering red light bounced off of indistinct, rounded forms that Luke could only barely see if he squinted. Were these the eggs that the expedition had discovered? That would mean some of their scientific equipment was probably still down there, or in one of the adjoining hangars.

“Looks like we found the nursery,” Luke muttered dryly.

“That’s...that’s a lot of eggs,” Cutter gulped beside him. “Are some of them open already?”

“Can’t tell,” Kreel answered before Luke could open his mouth, “Not enough light. Someone give me a reading on the structure.”

One of the SCAR troopers stepped forward with a scanner. “The adhesive material we’ve been seeing is holding most of the supports in place,” he said in a hushed voice, “But there’s a lot of damage underneath, probably left over from when this thing crashed.” He crouched at the edge and studied the sonic scanner for a few more minutes. “Looks like that’s a hangar, or was a hangar at some point. The part that would’ve been covered by a force field is mostly sealed with that gunk, but from the looks of things we’re right down into the earth right now. Past the ice. That’s loose earth under the plating.”

Kreel made a sound that suggested a grimace and shifted his weight. “Right, guess that means timed explosives, or else we bring this thing down on our heads.”

At Vader’s nod, almost invisible in the darkness, he moved forward and took a grappling hook from his belt. “Shoot anything that moves, or you’ll end up like Two-shot back there.”

Luke assumed “Two-shot” was the name of the flametrooper who had died in the first onslaught of facehugging crab-spider-monsters -- he did not doubt there would be more attacks of that nature in the very near future. He would probably find himself wondering about the man later, who he was, what he’d been like as a person -- it was hard not to when he had a name to put to a face, or helmet in this case -- but for now he let the thoughts drift away and settle into the back of his mind to wait, just as he had taught himself to do in battle when he’d lost pilots before. Two-shot had been ordered to protect him, personally, and the way Luke saw it, that made the man slightly his responsibility.

Someone would remember him, Luke would make sure of that. Enemies or not, Luke had been raised to believe that everyone deserved someone to mourn or remember them with a very few exceptions.

(In fact, “may they be forgotten by even the beasts of the desert” was still one of the harshest curses Luke knew, one he’d never been allowed to say as a child. To the best of his recollection, his aunt and uncle only reserved that curse for slavers.)

Luke took a breath, reached for the Force, and jumped down, ignoring the soldiers trying hook up grappling lines. Approximately five feet down, there was a ledge or protrusion that Luke could stand on. He adjusted his balance, ignited his lightsaber, and dropped the rest of the way, allowing the Force to guide him so that he landed soundlessly between the leathery egg-like things. (He would later discover that the “ledge” he’d used as a halfway point was a bit of piping barely six inches wide.) On either side of him, the tops of the leathery eggs peeled back with a thoroughly disgusting squishing sound.

Luke reacted without looking. His lightsaber moved in a whirling arc, cleanly bisecting the two facehuggers that launched out of the eggs. The encounter was over in less than four seconds. Just for good measure, Luke made several long gashes in the eggs a little as well. After all, they were quite large, and the little skittering nightmares were not even half the size of the eggs they came out of. What if more than one could fit in a pod? The young Jedi turned to glance up at the others.

“I think they react to proximity,” he called softly. “Be ready to torch these things the second your boots hit the ground.”

He jolted back with a yelp as Darth Vader dropped from overhead like a missile, landing boots-first on one of the eggs and crushing both it and its spidery occupant with a reverberating clang. He rose back to his full height slowly, a little stiffly, Luke thought. Then he ignited his own lightsaber, casting him in a ghoulish light.

“I mean….or you could just do that,” Luke managed to gasp after a second or two, once his pulse had settled back to a somewhat normal rate.

He ducked under Vader’s arm almost too quickly to track and sliced through an egg behind him that was just beginning to open. He glanced back at Vader, who seemed to be utterly ignoring the gory mess under his feet. That was disgusting, but also a show of some very impressive aim and power. Luke found he couldn’t help staring a little, wide-eyed in the half-light.

That took about a week off my life but it was actually kind of cool, he found himself thinking, wondering if his father and Obi-wan had ever done anything similar during the Clone Wars, and for a moment he felt like the enthusiastic kid he’d been before Hoth, before Bespin.

While he hadn’t broadcasted that thought over the bond, and was keeping a loose hold on the shields over his mind, he knew that his emotions were easy to read.

He sensed a moment’s surprise from his father before turning his attention to the nest around them. He kept his lightsaber up in a guard position, turning so that the back of his left shoulder just barely brushed Vader’s cloak. Most of the unhatched eggs were still ahead of them, but it would not do to forget that an attack could come from the rear.

One by one, the other soldiers slipped down to join them on their end of the nest, and the remaining unopened eggs on that side were quickly set alight or else shot full of holes. Even the ones that were already open were destroyed, just in case. They clustered together in much the same formation they had been walking in: Darth Vader at the front of the party with Luke just behind him and to his left, and Sergeant Kreel on the right. Behind them walked Cutter and Antin, with two flametroopers flanking on either side and the remaining SCAR troopers acting as a rearguard. Half of them kept their weapons trained on the eggs, the other half kept their weapons pointed upwards, assuming that the next attack would come from above.

They weren’t entirely wrong.

The party made its way methodically across the nest, some ten yards in length and twelve feet across, burning, stabbing, and shooting as they went. The stench of burnt flesh and an acrid smoke rose around them. Luke noticed that his father’s motions were tight, controlled, and he never got within more than a foot of the flames at any given time. The stiff set to his limbs suggested more than simply caution. Puzzled, Luke filed the information away for a later time. That one moment’s distraction was nearly a costly one. With his mind elsewhere, Luke felt the Force leap in warning, but responded a half-second late.

Vader, however, dropped into a ready stance the instant something felt off, and he took one of Kreel’s remaining flares and heaved it into the shadows. The sputtering red light bounced off of a hunched over figure, all long limbs and spiny protrusions, that hissed in loud displeasure. The adult had apparently been attempting to creep up on them in the darkness. As it gathered itself to spring, Luke thrust out his hands and, grasping for the Force, he pushed.

The monster flew back several yards, landing somewhere out of the ring of light with a wet thud. With the sound of its pained or enraged screech came another noise: several faint squishes in the far end of the hangar. Luke gritted his teeth and straightened, bringing his lightsaber up in a guard position. To his right, Vader did the same and just beyond him, Kreel lit the saber he’d been carrying.

“Oh what the kriff, what the kriff,” one of the SCAR troopers hissed, “That’s the thing you said comes out of people’s chests?”

“Cut the chatter, Deadlight,” Kreel snapped, “Get ready to fight.”

The next attack came from the right. It was difficult to see just how many of the facehuggers had left their cocoons, and the eggs provided them with cover. They were nearly silent as they moved through the membranes and growths across the floor. Then, two made the mistake of crawling up onto one of the burnt eggs to give it a vantage point to jump from. The flametroopers just behind Kreel let out yells and shot a burst of flame at them, not actually hitting the creatures, but driving them back into the darkness. But, having learned from their last skirmish, the two flametroopers stood ready, one aiming high and one aiming low, for the facehuggers’ inevitable second try.

Sergeant Kreel squinted through his helmet, just barely able to make out one of them crawling slowly in his direction. He hadn’t encountered more than a few of the little monsters, but even that was enough to make him think that this was a little uncharacteristic. The creatures didn’t appear to have any kind of intelligence to speak of, or at least, they hadn’t demonstrated any so far, so he didn’t think it was planning anything. Perhaps it was injured or ill? He didn’t really care. The problem was that it was just out of his range. He spotted a second facehugger moving with similar caution towards Vader, but he doubted it would be alive long enough to cause trouble for them.

There was something else in the area that Luke could sense, something that was not the full-grown parasite or the facehuggers or anyone in the party. It felt old. Old and angry. Confused by the strange presence, which resonated in the Force, but not strongly enough to indicate any significant sensitivity to the Force, Luke almost missed the warning tugging at his mind. A split second too late, he saw the crab-like figure launching out of the darkness. Luke brought his lightsaber up in front of his face, ready to cut through the animal.

“Look out!” Cutter slammed into him from the side, pushing him just far enough out of the way that the facehugger missed, landing on the flametrooper instead.

“Cutter!” Luke whirled, looking for a way to cut the creature off of the flametrooper before it managed to melt through the man’s helmet. “I was fine, you didn’t have to- oh Force. Hang on, Cutter!”

Vader turned his helmet ever so slightly in their direction at Luke’s shout.

“He’s okay!” Cutter grunted, even as acid began to drip down through tiny holes in his mask. The effort of dividing his attention between his attacker and his leader proved to be too much, and even as he held the spindly legs away from his head, Cutter felt its prehensile tail wrapping around his throat, up under the helmet.

Luke stared as the man dropped, but his horror was short-lived -- or rather, he had little time to contemplate it -- as another facehugger leaped from a freshly opened egg in front of him. It got close enough to curl its tail partway around his neck, but the lightsaber made quick work of both tail and body, leaving it in several pieces. He could sense more approaching from the front and the right, but the adult parasite had not approached again so far, and the heavy presence had not moved.

There was a flash of red to his right -- Luke stamped down hard on the beginnings of panic that rose at the sight -- and another facehugger hit the floor in a state of dismemberment. It isn’t like Bespin, don’t compare it to Bespin, Luke thought, while still leaning away from his father. He’s not after you. He’s busy. It won’t be like Bespin.

Behind him and to his right, Luke caught a glimpse of fire, and heard the whoosh of the flamethrower, and one of the troopers behind Kreel let out a triumphant sound.

“Got ‘im!”

“Not quite, Hoole,” his partner cut in grimly, “He’s not dead yet.”

The flametrooper guarding Antin leaned around the first two and adjusted his own device to send out a longer, narrower jet of flame. With a crackling sound, the facehugger promptly expired.

“There,” the man said laconically, “Sorted.”

“Thanks, Torrens,” Hoole muttered, a little grudgingly.

“Ah, blast these little-!” another flametrooper cursed after missing one, “They’re fast!”

Someone -- Luke didn’t even know which trooper it was at this point -- moved up and crouched beside him, next to Cutter. “Is it through the helmet?” she asked grimly.

Luke closed his eyes. “Yeah.”.

He knew what was coming.

“May the Force be with you, Cutter.”

The other flametrooper nodded, and Luke sensed a kind of approval from her, as if he’d just given Cutter his last rites. Perhaps he had, in a way. Then she looked up. “You’ve got the Force, yeah? Can you tell if he can feel this?”

“He’s not conscious,” Luke rasped. “Whatever happens with these things, they knock you out, I guess.”

“That’s good,” said the trooper, “Cutter was a good soldier. He deserves better than this, but at least he’s not awake.” Then she raised her flamethrower and fired point-blank into the facehugger and Cutter’s helmet alike.

Positions shifted and the group pulled a little tighter together, weapons out and backs facing each other to better fend off the facehuggers, who seemed far more determined than the ones on the upper deck had been. The one that had been creeping towards Antin made a charge and lost three limbs for its trouble. Had Kreel not been using the lightsaber, its blood would likely have burned through his boots, feet, and the ground below.

In the inky blackness ahead, a long, rattling hiss rose above the noise of blasters and flamethrowers. Then, with the force of a battering ram, the adult parasite charged. It made straight for Vader, and once again Luke found himself wondering whether his father’s polished black armor made the creatures think he was some kind of rival of the same species. The Force grew heavy and cold around Luke, and the shadows seemed to swell around them in a tide of rage. Vader raised a hand, claw-like, and swept it to the side. The monster flew backwards, though its flight was stopped short when it smashed into several eggs at once.

“Do not lower your defenses,” Vader snapped.

At his side, Luke nodded once, short and sharp.

“I’m ready,” he answered.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Luke Skywalker had a vague memory of a time in his childhood when a gang had attacked the homestead -- had they been Jabba’s men? He wouldn’t have been surprised, but he couldn’t quite remember now -- and old Ben Kenobi had appeared to fight shoulder to shoulder with his uncle. He still remembered Beru calmly reloading her blast pistols over and over, barely twitching as shots riddled the kitchen walls, although he had been able to sense that she was as terrified as he was. (“That’s my gunslinger,” Uncle Owen used to say when he thought nobody could hear).

When the dust had settled and Kenobi had gone on his way, Luke had quietly asked his uncle why he hadn’t made the hermit leave until it was all over.

“I thought you didn’t like Old Ben?” the boy had muttered into Owen’s rough tunic.

Owen had grimaced, then tousled Luke’s hair and shrugged. “Kiddo, sometimes when your back’s to the wall, you take whatever help you know isn’t gonna shoot you once your back is turned. Or, failing that, you go find someone who’s got more cause to go after your enemy than you, and you offer to lend a hand.”

Young Luke had puzzled over that for a while. It made sense, he’d supposed. Even with Anchorhead and the surrounding settlements being safer than most places, Tatooine was still Tatooine, and for all he knew Luke might have to team up with the kids who were always picking on him at school one day.

If there had been even a spare second in the present to ponder anything beyond move, fight, survive , that memory might have floated to the forefront of Luke’s mind. It would have been appropriate, considering he was surrounded by followers of the last organization he could ever be prevailed upon to join, yet here he was standing side by side with a dark lord of the Sith, ready to fight. Approximately half of the “nest” had been decimated, and the stench of burning organic matter choked the air. Smoke burned Luke’s eyes and covered everything in a brownish haze, but he had stopped relying solely on his eyes nearly half an hour ago. He sensed perhaps no more than three of the facehugging creatures left, and while those were undoubtedly still a danger, they paled in comparison to the fully adult being recovering in the darkness from where Vader had thrown it.

Without really thinking about it, Luke stepped up and to Vader’s left, just avoiding the edge of his cloak -- far heavier than he would have thought -- and lunged forward, sensing where his opponent would be before it leaped. With a flick of his wrist, the lightsaber cut through one of the last few creatures, leaving it twitching in neat halves on the slimy floor. Then Luke slid back, saber raised in a defensive position, and stood at Vader’s elbow, waiting.

It was not the most comfortable place to be, in any sense. For all that he and his father had undoubtedly established a kind of rapport, Darth Vader was still an incredibly dangerous man, and Luke did not know how to predict his moves. If he and the stormtroopers did anything to get in his way or slow him down, Luke suspected things would end badly for at least one person. He was just beginning to doubt that the man would deliberately harm him , at least, but who could know what would happen if things got “out of hand” -- so to speak -- the way they had in Cloud City? And more to the point, what would being exposed to the Dark Side for prolonged periods of time do to him? Would it make him feel sick and cold, like on Dagobah? Or was it a thing one could become desensitized to?

Luke hoped it wasn’t the latter. He’d already had to become somewhat desensitized to death in the three years since he’d left Tatooine. He really really didn’t want to just get used to the presence of the Dark Side of the Force.

There was another matter to consider, and one that was very faintly tugging at Luke’s thoughts, along with a whisper of foreboding coming another direction from the Force. Standing here at his father’s side -- he wasn’t sure what to call the confused emotion that accompanied that thought -- he was under at least some scrutiny. Provided they survived the encounter, the soldiers would wonder why a Rebel commander was fighting so easily side by side with Darth Vader. Even a moment’s unguarded reaction, a mere slip of the tongue, and they could both end up with questions they were not yet prepared to answer.

His father probably wouldn’t like that either.

Sergeant Kreel turned his helmet sharply, picking up movement on his HUD. “Hoole, on your right,” he growled.

The flametrooper behind him ducked back and out of the way as one of the facehuggers made a leap at him and missed utterly. He raised his flamethrower, prepared to snuff out one of the last two parasites.

But somehow, despite having no demonstrable intelligence or sentience, the facehuggers were beginning to avoid the fate of their comrades.

They were learning.

Hoole fired at the facehugger, but it dodged back, tail whipping behind it, and then bounded forward again. It was avoiding the flames. Frustrated, the flametrooper followed its progress with his weapon, firing off short bursts at a time. It paused a moment, as if tiring -- and perhaps it was, this long out of its egg without implanting a host -- then scuttled away just as Hoole shot off a tremendous burst of fire.

“No wait-!”

Luke’s warning from ahead went unheeded and came a second too late. A wrenching scream startled nearly all of them as the unlucky flametrooper beside Hoole happened to be standing right where the facehugger had run, as if it had intentionally diverted Hoole’s fire there. The screaming didn’t last long, and that was probably a mercy, all things considered.

“Torrens! Oh kriff , Torrens!” Hoole was nearly babbling in his dismay.

Friendly fire was not unheard-of in close-quarters fighting such as this, but Kreel’s men were supposed to be trained well enough to avoid it. Vader’s displeasure was a thing strong enough to almost be felt physically, even by the flametroopers and SCAR troopers.

Under his helmet, Sergeant Kreel set his jaw and tightened his grip on the blaster and lightsaber. “Close ranks!” he barked, “Hestia, cover Skywalker. Deadlight, move up and make sure Hoole doesn’t fry us all.”

He caught sight of the third crawling menace between two of the ruined eggs and took a pot shot at it. It was slowing down, perhaps tiring, and its reaction time was not as good as some of the facehuggers from the beginning of the fight, nearly ten minutes ago. His blaster bolt clipped one of its legs, sending up a faint spray of acid blood only faintly visible in the dark, and it limped away hurriedly.

Something moved ahead of them, not that Kreel or his soldiers would have been able to see or hear it. But to Luke and Vader it stood out plainly in the Force. The adult parasite had recovered. It was not charging this time, having learned its lesson from its first failed attempt. Evidently attempting to catch Vader off-guard, it was creeping up slowly, using the darkness to hide.

Darkness would not shield it from Darth Vader.

Saber in a ready position at his side, the Sith strode forward to meet the parasite. He ignored the sounds of flamethrowers and one or two blasters behind him as the soldiers tried -- and failed -- to shoot the facehugger that had indirectly caused Torrens’s death. Unlike its counterpart, it seemed only to grow quicker and more agile as the fight wore on. Then the SCAR trooper between Hestia and Antin knelt, carefully lined up a shot -- confident enough that there were no dangers behind him to drop his guard a moment -- and fired. The bolt went between Hoole and one of the other flametroopers and knocked the facehugger back with a severely mangled tail. It crawled away somewhat slower than before, only avoiding certain death because attention was suddenly arrested by the shriek at the head of the party.

The parasite was only barely visible in the bloody light of Vader’s lightsaber. He easily sidestepped a lunge of its head, no doubt meaning to attack with its bizarre inner jaw, then brought the blade down in a sweeping motion. In one blow he both severed the creature’s inner jaw and deeply scored its exoskeleton before it managed to pull back out of range. The creature’s agonized vocalizations rose to a painful pitch and left feedback squealing along some of the troopers’ comms.

For one horrible moment, barely even the space of a breath, Luke sensed that old, angry presence again and felt its attention shift. It was still not a strong enough presence to indicate Force sensitivity, but it didn’t feel like an animal, either. Luke began to wonder if perhaps he should have paid more attention to Tover’s explanation of the discovery of the Kiva.

To his left, the flametrooper who had killed Cutter and the facehugger strangling him suddenly raised her flamethrower and fired off a burst into the darkness. She didn’t hit any of the still-living creatures, in fact, she was really just jumping at shadows. But the fire caught at one of the viscous membranes along the walls, and for an instant it flared up bright, then dimmed. But the brief jet of flame had been just enough light for the soldiers to catch a glimpse of the enemy’s whereabouts.

Blinking back the spots in front of his eyes, Kreel fired at the adult. It dodged in a stuttering motion, its spiny body heaving as though with exertion or rage. He fired again, and the bolt glanced harmlessly off of its spines. But that seemed to anger it even more.

There were a scant two seconds of warning.

That Luke remembered from the library what it looked like when a parasite was about to charge was likely the only thing that saved him.

The monster made as if to charge Vader again, jaws open in a ringing screech. Then, already crouched low as it ran, it leaped .

Antin would later theorize that the creature’s long tail helped it to change direction quickly, and provided balance when running. At the moment, however, all he saw was the creature making a minute adjustment in midair so as to bring its full weight down on Commander Skywalker.

The force of the blow knocked Luke to the ground, and his lightsaber flew from his hand, deactivating and clattering to the floor. He’d managed to get his legs up under the creature’s torso when it landed, and a Force-assisted kick made it recoil just an inch, but it was enough for Luke to roll away from its mouth. His partially-healed ribs, aggravated by the adventures of the day, suddenly sent stabs of pain radiating through his chest, making him catch his breath. Luke suspected that Antin’s work earlier had been largely undone by the weight of the parasite. If they hadn’t been broken before , they probably were now .

The monster reared back to attempt to bite him again, thick strands of saliva dripping down onto the young Jedi’s head. Luke tried to roll the opposite direction and discovered that there were a set of long claws buried in the cloth of his right shoulder, piercing through to flesh and bone. Adrenalin-fueled and panicked as he was, Luke wouldn’t notice the pain for several more minutes.

His mind went blank. The last coherent sentence that passed through his mind was oh...I can’t move…. And then nothing but scattered images and emotions.

All this had occurred in the space of six seconds.

Then there was a rush of - something- around them all. The light of the flamethrowers guttered and dimmed, although the fire itself had not been lessened, and SCAR and flametrooper alike found themselves gripped in a state of unnatural panic. The shadows once more rose about them like a wave, and if any of them had been Force sensitive, they would have seen them move like the embodiment of fury, a murderous storm gathering around their leader.

Darth Vader barely bothered with the lightsaber at all. He slashed through the parasite’s tail quickly, almost distractedly, then focused all of his rage, all of his hatred, onto the creature trying to kill his son . The creature was strong, but its monstrous strength paled in comparison to the Dark Side of the Force. He yanked it back, and was just the slightest bit bemused when Luke’s choked sound of pain only added to his anger.

He could have killed it quickly with his power this focused, but he found that he didn’t want to. The darkness demanded more. He demanded more. Vader clenched a fist and the creature stumbled, a snapping sound indicating the reason for its sudden lack of stability. It whirled as best it could, flailing at the enemy it couldn’t see, couldn’t touch, but that did not save it.

Six more snaps followed the first as the parasite’s bones broke under the onslaught of the Dark Side. Then Vader flung it almost carelessly to the ground. With one quick slash, he separated its head from its body and stood over it, disgust and rage still pouring off of him like smoke.

He straightened and almost moved to check on Luke, but several things stopped him.

Firstly, there was the matter of showing disproportionate concern for a Rebel soldier that would inevitably bring questions. But under this first, easier to accept reasoning there was another thought that a week ago would not have even entered into his mind. He was still in the throes of a Sith rage, and liable to snap at the slightest provocation still. His men knew this, and were staying wisely back. But would it be safe for him to interact with Luke? Vader didn’t know when or why he had begun to think in those terms, but like the persistent glow of a candle, the thoughts remained.

“Antin,” he growled, fists still clenched, “Stabilize Skywalker immediately.”

The stormsurgeon rose from where he had been tending to Korris, the flametrooper between Deadlight and Hoole. The facehugger that had been plaguing the troopers on the right had made one final attack, launching itself at the flametrooper and wrapping around her helmet. It had no tail left, however, after Deadlight shot it, and so Hoole had been able to pry it off and kill it. But the acid dripping from the stump of its tail had compromised Korris’s armor. Antin had done the best he could with what he had, but all he’d really been able to do in the end was sedate the trooper so that she didn’t feel anything.

Antin shook his head as he moved to tend to Skywalker. He didn’t like losing patients, be they soldier, civilian, or even prisoner. “Any of the little horrors left?” he asked flatly as he knelt beside Hestia.

“One,” she muttered, “If I’ve been keeping track right.”

They both twitched slightly as a blaster fired, echoing in the sudden quiet. Kreel holstered his gun almost nonchalantly.

“None,” he corrected.

“Good,” the medic snapped, and shone a light on the wound in Skywalker’s shoulder. “Beastly things. I wouldn’t wish them on a Rebel!”

“What….about...Jabba the Hutt?” Luke rasped in an attempt at humor as he eased out of his jacket so that Antin could better examine the injury.

“Well yeah, but that sort of goes without saying, don’t it?” by his tone, it almost sounded as though Deadlight was rolling his eyes under the helmet.

Luke recognized his accent as Outer Rim, very possibly the southern side of Tatooine, and offered a shaky grin that was almost camaraderie.

Antin grumbled to himself as he prodded carefully at the deep puncture wounds in the young Rebel’s shoulder and shook his head. “This will need a full bacta treatment,” he warned, “Which we don’t have at the moment. I’m going to put a bacta patch on it for now and give you a shot of an antibiotic and something to clean out any bacteria that monster might’ve left in your bloodstream.”

“As long as it’s not provotin cystate,” Luke managed through gritted teeth while Hestia helped him sit up. “I react weird to that stuff.”

“Considering that is not an antibiotic, young man, I don’t think you need to be concerned,” Antin answered dryly. He glanced over at the flametrooper holding him up and made a vague gesture.

“Find something to immobilize that arm, he needs to put as little stress on the injury as possible.”

Hestia glanced around at the chamber for something that wasn’t covered in filth and ooze, and eventually settled for an improvised sling made out of one of Luke’s outer jackets that had been tied around his waist for safekeeping. Morbid curiosity led her to take a quick look at the gashes on the man’s shoulder, which were sluggishly bleeding now, but her stomach turned and she looked away. For all that she had been around a bit and seen and done terrible things in her own right, Hestia had a mild aversion to the sight of human blood.

The antibiotic and painkiller shots stung, though they were, overall, lost in the general burning of his shoulder. Luke gritted his teeth and remained as still as he could manage while the medic applied the bacta patch and helped him put his lighter jacket back on, though somewhat loosely. He didn’t even grimace this time when Antin unceremoniously handed him the bactade to drink. No doubt the man was aware of the state of his ribs.

Luke looked up through slightly bleary eyes and took stock of the situation. They’d lost three more men in this battle, and now both of the flametroopers who’d been assigned to protect him had died. Now he couldn’t help wondering who would be left when they finally managed to get out of the Kiva . Or, for that matter, when Vader would decide they’d done enough and could leave.

He let Antin and Hestia haul him to his feet, keeping his face as stoic as he was able to when they inadvertently jarred his ribs, and turned to face Vader. He was aware that the man had been intentionally keeping his distance, and while he wasn’t sure of why , exactly, he couldn’t help being slightly grateful that he hadn’t been exposed to that much Dark Side at close range. Now his father seemed to have calmed, though that was really sort of a relative statement where Darth Vader was concerned, and had gone back to looming ominously.

“What is his condition?” Vader demanded harshly.

“He is stable, my lord,” Antin returned, only a little shaky, to his credit. “But his ability to fight may be somewhat diminished.” Considering Skywalker was obviously a Force user, Antin didn’t feel comfortable outright dismissing him from battle as too injured to continue. Injuries rarely seemed to stop Lord Vader, after all.

“Good.” Vader’s answer was clipped, almost cold. “Find a way out of this pit that will not exacerbate his injuries enough to slow us down.”

He passed behind them as he spoke, and just out of sight of the soldiers, his hand rested briefly on Luke’s back before he moved on.

Are you able to continue?

Luke’s thoughts were a little hazy, and somewhat unguarded -- a result of the painkillers, no doubt -- but he was quick to respond. I’m alright. I can fight with one hand. I’ve done it before.

Despite this unwanted reminder of Bespin, Vader felt no reproach or anger from the boy, and concluded that it had not been a pointed remark.

You...are far too nonchalant regarding near death experiences, my son. He settled on a somewhat neutral reply.

I have some suspicions regarding where I got that trait, Luke answered easily, almost jokingly -- yes, the painkillers were definitely in effect now -- then grew more serious. It’ll probably all hit me at once in an hour or two. I won’t be okay for maybe twenty minutes, then I’ll be fine. Same as always.

Luke shifted his position again as the remaining soldiers set up their grappling hooks and cables to get out of the ruins of the nest and looked up to where his father was now standing at the top of the deck, giving orders to Kreel.

Father?

When Vader instantly glanced down to where he and the medic were still standing, Luke spoke aloud.

“There’s still one left to kill, isn’t there?”

He sensed a slight struggle from Vader, as if the man wasn’t quite certain of his answer. At last he said in a low voice, “Perhaps.”

Maybe he sensed the strange, other presence as well.

Luke sighed and allowed Hestia to hook the cable to his belt and haul him up. He turned to offer his good arm to help pull the medic up.

“Come on,” he grunted. “Mission’s not over yet.”

Chapter 17: Chapter 17

Chapter Text

Surprisingly, the destruction of the nest seemed to have lightened the atmosphere of the derelict ship, and not merely because of the flames lingering behind. Perhaps it was because they had just prevented any further monster births for the moment, thus limiting their remaining adversaries. Luke trudged along in the diminished party. He was almost on autopilot, letting the others occasionally put out a hand to guide him as he turned all his attention and energy to stretching out with the Force and scanning the area around them. There was at least one more of the creatures present, and the fact that Forien and the last two members of his team were still not accounted for suggested that there could be more within a day or so. Hopefully they would have done enough to retreat and let the Executor destroy the Kiva by then, precluding their need to seek out the monsters themselves.

As the small group left the destroyed nest hangar and made their way back to the cargo bay to investigate one of the other hangars, Luke caught the sounds of whispered conversation behind him. It was Hestia, the flametrooper who seemed to have taken over Cutter and Two-shot’s task of protecting him, and the trooper from Tatooine, Deadlight.

“Oh kriff,” Deadlight hissed suddenly.

“What?”

“I just had a really bad thought.”

It was nearly impossible to tell, given their expressionless helmets, but Luke caught the impression that Hestia had reacted with a wrinkled nose and gritted teeth.
“....and just what is this really bad thought?”

For a moment they went silent as Vader held up a hand to stop the party, then indicated that they would move to the next hangar over. When everyone was walking again they resumed their conversation.

“The nest,” Deadlight began, “Or whatever it was. Those were eggs, right?”

“I mean, unless they were cocoons, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless those spider things are a different species,” Hestia replied.

“So we’ll say eggs for arguments’ sake.”

“Fine. They were eggs. What of it?”

Deadlight was clearly uncomfortable. “Did that big one look capable of laying eggs of that size to you?”

Luke felt his stomach drop in synch with Hestia’s sudden spike of disgust as the implications set in. Something had laid the eggs. And the idea of that something being bigger than the adult parasites did not sit well with him at all, but it made an awful kind of sense.

“I think I just thought of something worse,” Hestia whispered after a moment.

“Oh great.”

“Yeah. Uh….if something in this craft laid those eggs, and it wasn’t that thing Lord Vader killed, how do we know it’s not still laying eggs?”

This brought Luke right out of his Force haze and he blinked. Hestia had made a very good point. Their scanners weren’t quite powerful enough to scan the entire ship for lifeforms from their position, and he’d had trouble earlier reading the positions of the eggs in the Force, which would make it extremely difficult to know if there were any other “nurseries” aboard the Kiva. He wondered if his father had heard any of the troopers’ discussion. If he had, he made no indication of it. That did not surprise Luke, really. Lord Vader was used to immediate obedience with no questions asked, and his men were highly unlikely to raise a hand and say “excuse me, Lord Vader sir, don’t you think this mission is sort of suicidal? I’d like to go home please”.

His father was probably just as unlikely to admit it if he were to conclude that the mission had been a mistake. And for the sake of his own physical and mental wellbeing, Luke had a hunch that he would be better off saying nothing about it either aloud or over their bond. It did not do to question Lord Vader when he was leading a mission, and anything that could be perceived as challenging his authority would not be taken well. Luke had run missions with a few other commanders or ranking officers in different branches of the Rebellion who had behaved that way on occasion. He knew how to watch his step. But the idea that they could have been practice for interacting with his own father smacked of bittersweet irony.

They entered the hangar adjacent to the wreck of the “nursery” with little ceremony. This one was half destroyed, and spears of rock and earth were faintly visible where some of the walls ought to have been. Structurally, this chamber was likely to be more fragile. Luke had never been the claustrophobic type, but here, underground in a huge old vessel that was half falling to pieces, he could understand the discomfort. They would have to tread carefully here, especially if they were hunting more of the creatures.
Luke’s thoughts were interrupted by the stormsurgeon pressing something into his hand. It was another bottle of bactade. There couldn’t have been all that many in his supplies to begin with, making it somewhat surprising that he would use one on the prisoner.

“It won’t fully heal you, you’ll still require a full overnight soak,” Antin said coldly, “But it’ll serve well enough if we get into another fight. Consider it a strategic investment.”

Ah, now that, Luke understood. Antin wasn’t making his decision based on alliances or compassion, he was choosing to distribute the bacta based on logic and strategy. If another adult parasite attacked, better to have the two strongest fighters in relatively good condition. That would give the others better odds at surviving in the long run. He’d made calls like that in the past, and so had the Alliance.
Luke nodded his thanks briefly, but did not call attention to Antin’s actions, just in case not everyone agreed with his logic. As before, the stuff was absolutely vile, but worked quickly.

“Temporary measure,” the medic repeated, looking away.

“Thanks, I hate it,” Luke quipped under his breath, but he guessed that Antin caught the gratitude under the sarcasm.
His ribs were still tender to the touch, and moving too quickly made them ache, but he didn’t think they were cracked or broken now. The shoulder was a different story. The muscles would be slow to repair themselves where the claws had torn through, and the most the bactade would do for now was jumpstart the healing process.

The hangar was empty, which was a relief after the chaos of the last hour. There were faint impressions in the Force of someone or something having moved through not long ago, but whatever it was, it was gone now. Luke caught a faint glimmer of something in the darkness and frowned. He made as if to go investigate before realizing that the stormtroopers wouldn’t let him get far. As far as they knew (and frankly, as far as he knew) he was a prisoner. A very useful prisoner in a fight, but a prisoner nonetheless. His half-motion attracted Kreel’s attention, who looked back in irritation.

“What are you doing?” he demanded in a low voice.

“There’s something over there -- inanimate -- seems out of place but I can’t tell what it is from here,” Luke returned in a flat tone. He didn’t feel like picking a fight at the moment.

Kreel didn’t like the idea of following any kind of suggestion from a Rebel, but he begrudgingly moved to examine the thing that had caught Luke’s attention, while keeping one hand on his blaster. The rest of the party halted at his low exclamation, and turned when he shone a light onto it.
“This isn’t from the crash,” the sergeant said, waving his light at a goggle-like apparatus on the ground.

It was a piece of equipment used by scientists in the field to view materials and analyze their molecular components without having to take a sample and potentially compromise the subject. Very expensive, and very new technology to be finding in the wreck of the Kiva. None of Forien’s men would have had access to that kind of gear, nor would they have had a reason to take it with them to the ship.

“Pike?” Luke murmured.

“Or the other members of the previous expedition,” Vader replied unexpectedly. He shifted his weight and Luke caught a snatch of unguarded thought. If the expedition indeed made it this far, it may have been before they discovered the nest unless Pike or Tover abandoned the afflicted members to explore further.

Luke decided that was a much more optimistic approach than his idea. He’d wondered if they’d only made it this far and perhaps there was another nest somewhere deeper in the ship that the original expedition might’ve known nothing about. Never in all his life had he considered there might be a day when kriffing Lord Vader’s take on a situation made his look pessimistic. But nothing in the last three days -- or four weeks, for that matter -- had been anything even approaching “normal”, and Luke had learned a long time ago that time to sit and ponder absurd twists of fate was a luxury that he did not have.
Speaking of pessimistic…

Um...Father?
Luke eased a few steps forward cautiously, keeping between Antin and Hestia as they scanned the area. Vader’s reply was neither verbal nor words over their bond -- which he’d gotten into the habit of thinking of as “audible” despite the fact that no one else would have been able to hear them -- but a quick, distracted tip of his helm. Not so much terse or irritated this time, at least, but the Sith was very, very focused on the situation around them. Luke took this as permission to continue, but to be brief.

Before, in the nest, I sensed something beyond the adult parasite and the crab-things. It wasn’t human, whatever it was. I sensed anger, and something old.

The party covered six more feet of the hangar, carefully stepping around debris and open patches of earth, before Vader answered.

I know.

That….was not terribly explanatory. Luke frowned, but restrained himself from pressing the issue. Baby steps, Skywalker, he thought to himself, Demanding more details probably won’t result in a good open conversation right now. We’re in the middle of a mission anyway, but I don’t think even Master Yoda could pull someone toward the Light that much in just two days. Not that he seemed to think it was possible.
Unbidden, the memory rose in his mind of his own declaration of a task’s impossibility and Yoda’s stern reply. “That is why you fail”, he’d said. Luke was forced to apply a great deal of willpower to tamp down the sudden urge to snort at the recognition that he was now applying Yoda’s lesson in a way that the diminutive Jedi master probably would not have considered.

A long, creaking groan echoed around them, interspersed with low, hollow booms. Luke crossed his arms tightly, and his frown deepened. They were very deep beneath the surface and the weight of the ice on the derelict craft added to the tomb-like feeling of the place. The Kiva had been periodically settling the entire duration of their mission, but in the tension of the firefights it had been easy to block out the sounds. Now, in the silence, they were becoming incredibly unnerving. Luke had a brief mental image of the ship collapsing, trapping them all forever in an icy grave. He really, truly hoped they wouldn’t have to stay in the less structurally-sound part of the ship for much longer.

The life signatures of the missing three Imperials had been growing steadily harder to pinpoint the longer they were in the Kiva. At first, Luke had thought that this meant they were going further away from wherever the unfortunate souls were located. But the harder he tried to sense them, the more unsure he became of his previous theory. It wasn’t that they felt distant, like someone at the edge of the range of his senses would feel. It was more that they seemed to be fading into some kind of dormancy. He’d had difficulty in the past identifying sleeping or unconscious life forms through the Force, perhaps that was what was keeping them from finding Forien and the missing troopers.

Sinking back into the Light Side to search for the missing men, Luke barely noticed that the party had halted again. In fact, he nearly kept walking without them. It wasn’t until one of the troopers -- probably either Kreel or Deadlight -- snagged him by the back of the collar that he realized they’d come across an obstacle. The ceiling above them sagged here, bent inwards with the weight of debris or the force of the long-ago crash, held up by a few remaining girders that did not seem to be terribly stable. Vader reached out and laid a glove against the metal, quietly judging its strength.

“If these girders are returned to a position where they can support the weight of the ceiling, the chamber will not collapse,” he murmured. Then he turned suddenly.

“Luke.”

The Rebel inched forward, a question in his eyes.
It wouldn’t occur to Luke for several minutes that his father had just addressed him by his first name in front of the soldiers.

Vader gestured to the twisted mess of metal and debris and tilted his helmet meaningfully. “Brace the pillars.”
If you can, lay unspoken between them. A challenge both from a Sith to a Jedi and from a veteran Force wielder to a novice.

“I can do it,” Luke hissed, unable or unwilling to keep a hint of defiance from creeping into his tone.

“Then by all means, do so, young Jedi,” Vader retorted, unable or unwilling to mask a touch of sarcasm in his own tone. How of all things did sarcasm manage to slip through the vocoder when so many other intonations did not?

Admittedly, Luke’s concentration was not what it could have been at first. But whatever his father was up to, he couldn’t help feeling the need to, well, to prove something to him. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was proving. Perhaps that he could manage just fine without resorting to using the Dark Side. Perhaps that the Light Side was stronger. Perhaps simply that he could take care of himself and that the last few days were not an accurate representation of his day to day life. Luke wasn’t entirely sure.

He reached for the Force and felt it like a humming in his bones. He grasped at it, let the warm light spread through him just enough to ease the chill his father seemed to radiate, then moved to touch one of the girders. Master Yoda probably wouldn’t have even needed to touch them, but Luke found it easier to concentrate this way. He stretched out his other hand, imagining a strong grip wrapping around the other pillar. That was simple enough. So what-?

Abruptly there was a surge of darkness as cold as ice. The shadows crawled over him, wrapping around him like claws for an instant before releasing him to stretch upward and brace against the damaged ceiling. Then Luke understood. With a truncated curse, he snatched at the Light, starting to waver with his distraction, and pushed at the pillars. Shoulders bowed under the effort, Luke fought to keep the girders stable and upright as Vader pushed the ceiling back up. The Kiva groaned around them, and in several places the dirt shifted.
Sergeant Kreel took several steps back, tensed to flee at any given signal, and the remaining troopers kept behind him. This was madness. Were the two Force wielders trying to collapse the chamber on them all?

But the ceiling slowly leveled itself out, and as the troopers watched, Darth Vader raised his other hand and the pillars untwisted themselves even as Skywalker seemed to hold them steady. The deck above them shuddered, creaked, and then settled. For a long time, no one dared to move, or even breathe. But when the roof did not come crashing down around their ears, the soldiers began to relax a little. Skywalker stumbled back a few steps, looking visibly worn. Was it his injuries, perhaps? Or was he simply weaker than Vader? Kreel suspected it was the latter.

Vader shifted and flicked a glove towards Kreel and the others. “Search this chamber and the one beyond. Any evidence of human activity is to be reported at once. Any parasites are to be destroyed on sight.”

“Yes, milord,” Kreel nodded sharply and waved Deadlight and Hestia to follow him.
As they made their way out, Vader’s gaze bored into Luke, despite the helmet and mask.

“You,” he said after a moment, tone measured and words clipped, “Complicate matters needlessly by stubbornly clinging to the weakness of the Jedi. You could have straightened those girders without my assistance.”

And Luke had no doubt that he could have, had he the experience most Jedi would have had at his age in the days before the Empire. But that wasn’t what the Sith was driving at and they both knew it. Shifting his gaze away from Vader, Luke found that Antin, who was closest, was very pointedly moving away so as not to overhear anything they said. Smart man. Seeing no point in delaying the conversation, Luke turned back to face his father.

“You told me to brace the pillars, and that’s what I did,” he said as calmly as he could manage. Then, in a fierce whisper, “I will not use the Dark Side. I will never use it.”

For a long moment, his father said nothing. Then he tilted his helmet back as if considering the boy.
“That is,” he said slowly, “A rather premature statement to make, considering your position.”

“We’ll see, Father,” Luke returned, almost too quietly to hear.

Any further arguments were curtailed when Kreel’s voice crackled over their comms.
“Sir, I think we’ve found Forien.”

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

The announcement did not carry any kind of relief with it, nor had Luke expected it to. He’d known nearly an hour ago that they were not going to find Forien in any kind of salvageable state. A glance at Vader revealed nothing, of course, but Luke suspected his father was either considering how best to dispose of the lieutenant, or else how to proceed from here. Caught between a need to assert his independence following Vader’s veiled threat and a brutally pragmatic desire to stay in close proximity to the strongest warrior present, Luke shifted his weight and frowned.

“I’m going to check it out,” he said in a low voice. Not a request, or an excuse, just a simple statement of fact.

“No you are not.”
Another statement of fact, and coming from someone that Luke had no doubt was almost as strong-willed as Leia.

What does he think I’m going to do? Ask the parasite if it wants to train to be a Jedi with me? he thought sourly. The image of the crab-things in old-fashioned and oversized Jedi robes was a little amusing, but not enough to alleviate the tension radiating through the air.

“I’m not going to attack Kreel, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he muttered, a little sarcastically. “He’s an irritant, but he’s not that bad.”

“Less of your impertinence, young Skywalker,” Vader returned sharply, the words carrying the feeling of a correction in them, “You will keep your focus on the larger threat, and allow my soldiers to do their duty.”

He was trying to keep Luke out of the chamber where Forien was, that much was painfully obvious. The reason was not readily apparent, however, which frustrated Luke. If their places had been reversed, if this had been a mission where Luke was in command and one of his Rogues was the one with the experience with the parasites, then he knew he would’ve kept his Rogue out of the chamber out of sensitivity. To avoid the possibility of compromise via untimely reminder of high stress and terror.
They didn’t really do that in the Empire. You did what they told you to do and went where they told you to go and nobody cared if you were afraid or not. That made it unlikely that Vader was keeping Luke away from Forien out of any chance of re-exposure to the little chest-bursting nightmare worms.

Maybe it was a tactical thing. He was in rather poor shape, and it would be better to save his energy for an attack that really needed him. Logical enough, if annoying. But then, what was “the larger threat” he was supposed to be focusing on? The Big Presence? Something on the edge of his awareness, a bad feeling, tugged insistently at his mind and he glanced in the direction Kreel and the others had taken.

“Tell them-” Luke started, then was cut off by a startled exclamation from Kreel over the comm.

“Found the others! They’re in the wall.”

“In the wall?” Luke repeated incredulously. Not that Kreel could hear him, as Vader was the one with the comm.

“They’re sort of...cocooned, in that resin-stuff that’s been covering everything. One of them is awake. Hey! Hey, soldier, report! What happened to you?”

There was a strangled, wet, gasping sound, and then a terrified voice rose over everything else, so loud it sent feedback squealing along the comm line.

“Get it out! Get it out get it out get it out get it out-!” the screaming was interspersed with breathless sobs. Luke curled his toes in his boots, tensed.
He could guess where this was about to go.

“It’s about to hatch,” he said grimly. “They move faster than you’d think once they exit the host. You, um, you were right about one thing, earlier,” he let out a long breath and forced down the bile rising in his throat. “He’s pretty much already dead.”

No matter how it happened, someone was going to die. Like it or not, Jedi or not, Luke decided, there really was no right answer in this situation.

At first, it seemed his father either hadn’t heard him or wasn’t paying attention. His helmet was turned, facing the direction Kreel had gone.

“There is something…” he said quietly, more to himself than to Luke, “Something…”

Then he raised the comm. “Fire at will, Sergeant. Do not allow even a single parasite to survive.”

The conscious man was still screaming when they shot him.
This time, the deaths felt strange in the Force, sort of twisted around. Perhaps because the deaths of the troopers who had been attacked by the facehugging parasites had occurred before the little monsters had a chance to implant the larger parasites in their hosts. These men died carrying parasites that were already about to emerge. The combined, confusing feeling of so much death at once obscured what had happened at first, and it wasn’t until Luke heard a high-pitched squeal that he knew.

“Kriff! How’d it survive that blast?!” Hestia shouted. “That was a direct hit on the guy’s chest!”
Did the hatchlings have armor too? Luke couldn’t remember, and he hoped not, but either the thing had moved out of the way before the blaster bolt hit, or it was tougher than the facehuggers.

With Vader still focused on...whatever he was sensing -- Luke wasn’t tapped into the Force deeply enough to catch more than a cloud of Bad at the moment -- the comm was going unanswered. Well, this is probably a bad idea, but no worse than anything else I’ve done today, Luke thought, and gingerly removed the comm unit from his father’s hand. Vader didn’t seem to notice, which was concerning on multiple levels.

“Kreel!” Luke hoped the sharpness of his tone would get the man’s attention. “If that thing is armored, it’s going to stand up to blasters pretty well. That’s if you can hit it. Either corner it with the flamethrowers or dice the crawling sleemo!”
When this was met with a second of silence, he added flatly, “The lightsaber, Sergeant.”

Perhaps it was the sound of the lightsaber over the comm that caught Vader’s attention, or perhaps he had simply finished scanning the rest of the ship. Either way, when Luke looked up again, the black helmet was tilted down, empty gaze fixed on him. For a moment the only sound that didn’t come from the comm was the rhythmic whooshing of his mechanized breathing, then Vader held up a hand expectantly. Luke swallowed hard, then handed him the comm unit. He kept his face carefully neutral, bracing for an irate Sith Lord, but Vader said nothing about it.

Luke knew he was probably at least a little annoyed about him snatching the comm to give his men directions, considering that wouldn’t really fly in the Alliance either, but it had been a sort of life-or-death situation. Or was this something his father would expect him to do -- take responsibility for Imperial lives on missions -- if he were forced to serve the Empire?
That was a considerably more unsettling thought. But it was one he’d probably have to get used to if he was going to find a way to twist things to the Rebellion’s favor one way or another. One moment at a time, Skywalker, just breathe.

“Find Pike,” Vader said suddenly, and whatever Luke had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.
“You have encountered him before and will remember his signature in the Force.”

Luke was sorely tempted to make an incredulous face. Somehow, his father managed to make everything, even what was most likely meant as awkward encouragement, sound like a threat or an order.

A brief observation from some hours before, neatly filed away into Luke’s brain for later review, shot to the forefront of his mind. He remembered the human he had sensed in the pit when they’d still been working their way down into the cargo hold.

“Pike was watching us before!” he realized, “That he’s managed to avoid both us and the parasites in their various stages is impressive, but I find it more disturbing.”

“As do I,” Vader replied.

Luke made a face when he ran back over his words in his mind idly and realized that they were considerably more formal than his usual way of speaking. Something more like what he’d use in a briefing. Or more like-
Oh please please please don’t let me end up talking like him. I can only take so much nonsense in one lifetime.

Semi-universally relatable fears of turning into one’s progenitors aside, Luke knew that finding Pike would probably mean finding the last pieces of this thoroughly unnecessary puzzle they’d all been thrust into. Of course, it would have been easier to simply leave the Kiva and reduce the ship to molten slag from orbit, just to be sure. But Pike would likely be caught in the blast that way, and if he wasn’t infected by the parasites, Luke had no reason not to try to save him. He was vaguely aware of Sergeant Kreel, Hestia, and Deadlight returning to the hangar and reporting to his father, but he tuned them out.

The ship spread out around him like a maze, ruined and crumbling. Clustered around him were human lives, and also death, fear, and despair. This would be a perfect setting for another Dark Side cave like the one on Dagobah, frankly. Further out were traces, just faint echoes where life had been -- the creatures, for the most part, but also a few echoes that might have been Forien and his men. Hovering at the fringes of his mind was a large, twisted presence. It was alive, and it was angry, but it was also curious, and curiously sluggish. Perhaps it had been dormant and was simply irritated that its slumber had been disturbed by a stampeding gang of noisy little humans? That was probably a bit optimistic, given the circ*mstances, but Luke could dream.

He did not realize he’d eased down to sit on the hangar floor the deeper he sank into the Force. Please. Please just show me Pike.
Luke felt as though he were reaching out, grasping for every glimmer of life in the ship. The Force surrounds us. Life creates it. If he’s here, the Force will show me.
There was a distortion of sorts by the Thing waiting in the dark. Luke did not want to get any closer to it, even though he didn’t think it was Force sensitive, but really that was the one direction he had not scanned as thoroughly yet. The slow, dark emotions of whatever was waiting out there were almost overwhelming. Even after trying to touch its mind, Luke could not readily ascertain whether it was an extremely intelligent animal or a sentient, and decided to proceed as if it were the latter to be safe.

Ah.
There was another presence, inadvisably close to the thing that Luke had decided to call the Lurker. It was apprehensive, but determined. And it was human.

Luke opened his eyes slowly, and found Hoole crouched warily a foot away. He held his blaster rifle loosely, but there was tension in his arms and shoulders. The stormtrooper pulled back upon noticing that Luke was aware of him, and he stood.

“Right,” Luke muttered under his breath, and did his best to keep his breath from hissing between his teeth as he forced himself to his feet. Bactade only fixed so much in a short amount of time, and he was going to be in pain for a while. He would survive, he’d run long missions with moderate pain before.

The remaining survivors of the search-and-destroy mission were all watching him, and Luke realized he was probably going to have to say something unless Vader did first. At that moment, he was using most of his remaining patience to handle the pain in his shoulder, and decided to drop any pretense of being a cooperative prisoner. They needed to leave as quickly as possible.

“Alright,” he said sharply -- just pretend they’re Rogues. Kriff, if they weren’t Imps, I’d take ‘em in a heartbeat for how they handled this nightmare -- “Good news: I’ve located Pike about a kilometer west. It feels like the structure is more stable out that way.”

“What’s he doing?” Kreel asked cautiously.

Luke turned a sidelong glance in Vader’s direction. It was entirely possible that Vader would want to keep the Lurker a secret for now. But if Pike was anywhere near that thing, there was a high likelihood that they would encounter it as well. Rather than comment -- verbally or mentally -- his father turned and began marching in a westward direction. Well, if he wasn’t going to say anything, Luke was going to have to do it.

“That’s the bad news,” Luke pushed past Kreel and headed in the same direction Vader was taking. “There’s something else in here and he’s made his way straight for it.”

“Something else?” The sergeant clenched his fists so tightly that his prosthetic sparked and popped. “What else?”

Luke didn’t stop moving. Time was of the essence now, and he could hear the soldiers following anyway. “We’ll deal with it when we get there, Sergeant. For now, just be ready to fight.”

You are adapting surprisingly well to commanding them.
Had Darth Vader been speaking aloud, in a normal man’s voice, no doubt he would have spoken with a mixture of satisfaction and sarcasm, considering his rebellious offspring’s sudden burst of authority.

I will save everyone I can, Luke returned, Pike, them, myself. You.

After a long pause, his father replied almost carefully. You...will no doubt do what you feel is right, I expect. Regardless of consequences.

Of course.

As it turned out, “sturdy” did not translate completely to “the ship is intact”. The further west the remaining seven members of the original search party moved, the more intricate the biological resin-like material on the structure became. In places, it almost took on a strange, biomechanical appearance. It had hardened here, layer after layer solidified into something strong enough to hold up the ceiling easily. None of them stopped to check, but it was likely that this part of the nest -- if they were to categorize the spread of the material as an extension of the nest -- was the oldest they’d encountered so far.

Deadlight saw the equipment first.

“This looks new,” he muttered, shining a small light over a few portable computing systems and some unrecognizable piece of lab tech. “I dunno what it is, but I bet our friend left it.”

Antin leaned to the edge of the procession to look it over. “That’s for gathering biological samples. Usually in the cases of studying a pathogen,” he pointed to the unknown machine. “Not especially confidence-inspiring in the context of what we’ve been encountering today.”

“Kriff. So this is a biological weapons scenario?”

“Refrain from making premature conclusions, soldier,” Darth Vader spoke at last, startling them both.

“Yes, milord,” Deadlight gulped, and picked up the pace.

“He’s right. For all you know, this could be a much worse scenario,” Luke piped up in a falsely cheerful tone from near the front of the line.

Hoole grimaced under his helmet and leaned over to Deadlight. “And here I thought Rebel insurgents were supposed to be obsessed with hope or something.”

His companion shrugged and kept his voice low on the helmet-to-helmet comms. “He’s from Tatooine, unless I read his accent completely wrong. We desert kids grow up fast and grow up practical out there. No sense sugarcoating this mess.”

“Makes sense. You ever meet this guy before?”

“Hoole. Seriously? Tatooine is huge. He sounds like he came from the Mos Eisley area -- which, honestly, would explain why he went Rebel. If you’re from Mos Eisley you either support the Hutts or literally anyone willing to fight them, way I heard it. Not like Mos Entha.”

The two lapsed into silence, tightened their grips on their rifles, and returned to keeping a close watch on their surroundings. Then, unexpectedly, Hoole murmured, “Is he Rebel though?”

Both troopers glanced up to where Commander Skywalker walked, arms free, and with only a slight limp noticeable. He was almost matching stride with Lord Vader, which was rather impressive considering how long Vader’s legs were.

“I didn’t want to say anything, but this is a little non-standard,” Deadlight admitted. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a Force-dark-wizard professional-courtesy thing.”

There was a door still visible in one of the walls -- well, really more of a hatch. Someone had taken the time to clear or burn away most of the resin across it, leaving its shape fully recognizable under a thin layer of mucus. There was a small research station set up beside the door, along with some heavy-duty tranquilizer rifles and a salvaged generator hooked to the door controls. Bent over a crate and loading one of the tranquilizer rifles was Pike. He looked as though he were moving on a kind of autopilot, with a grim set to his face and stiff movements.

“Sorin Pike.”
Vader’s pronouncement was less a form of address and more a death sentence.

The man startled like a jakrab, jerking the muzzle of the tranquilizer rifle up. He trembled as he stared at the ominous figure, then his eyes fell on Luke.

“You-! You helped us before, don’t let them stop me now! This is too important!” he stammered.

Luke squinted at him. “Pike, I don’t even know what it is you’re doing, but people are dead and w- they need you to answer some questions.”

“You don’t understand,” Pike ran a hand through his thinning hair, “This is for Qeward, somebody has to prove he was right!”

“I don’t know if you noticed this,” Sergeant Kreel snarled, “But chest-popping monsters from this hill-that’s-really-a-ship killed six people in that library, and five of my troopers. Who the kriff is going to doubt the dead guy?”
He motioned sharply to Hoole and Hestia to restrain the missing scientist.

“As the last living member of the doomed expedition, you will be held responsible for what has happened here when we return to the surface, and this accursed ship will be destroyed,” Vader announced curtly.

Luke felt a surge of horror from the man as Hestia improvised a pair of binders from the strap of the tranquilizer rifle.
“No! You- you can’t do that, these animals need to be studied! Qeward wanted to study the eggs, the whole life cycle! This- This is a new species!”

“No. It is not.” Vader drew himself up taller and there was an audible layer of menace in his voice warning all present of danger. “It is a plague.”

Something moved at the edge of the room and Luke’s head whipped around. Nothing was visible in their small circle of light, but something was creeping slowly and silently along the upper part of the wall. Following his lead, Hestia whirled and raised her flamethrower, training it on the wall as well. Deadlight co*cked his rifle and looked around, squinting behind his helmet.

“Someone get some lights on the thing,” Kreel hissed. He didn’t doubt that if Skywalker was reacting, something was there. He just wanted to see it.

Antin dug through his medical pack for a moment before coming up with an emergency flare gun and looked to Luke. “Can you give me a general angle?”

“Try sixty degrees.”

The surgeon nodded and adjusted his aim accordingly. The flare made a soft pop as it ignited, revealing one of the full-grown creatures silently watching them as it clung to the wall. It did not seem to react to the light so much as to the fact that it was a small flame near its face. If the nightmarish muzzle could truly be called a face.

“It’s extraordinary,” Pike breathed.

“Annnd you are a crazy person,” Hestia growled.

Vader considered the monster on the wall, just as it considered them. He did not wish to expend any more time and energy than was necessary to finish this mission. The sooner Luke was securely aboard the Executor, the better. He could sense what was on the other side of the door, could sense that it was aware of them and at the very least highly indignant at their presence.

It wasn’t the same needy, hungry rage that the creature had exuded the first time he’d encountered it, when it had been young and small. This was a slow, clever anger, an instinctive need to survive and to kill regardless of circ*mstances. The years had only made it stronger.
And Vader did not intend to engage it in a fair fight.

As long as the First creature remained behind the door, the odds were more in their favor. Vader glanced down to consider his son. The bactade was working to repair the worst of the damage well enough internally, but the wounds to his shoulder would hamper his ability to fight. It was admittedly impressive that the boy was handling the pain he must have been feeling so stoically, but it would not aid them in a skirmish. He’d taken enough risks already. Luke would not be part of this battle.

“Bring it down,” he snapped, and ignited his lightsaber.

“No, don’t-!” Pike cried.

Then Luke evidently decided he was not to be outdone. Reaching out with his good arm and the Force, Luke shut his eyes and imagined the Light, like talons, closing around the creature’s carapace.

“Be ready!” he called to the troopers, then pulled with all his strength.
The creature slammed into the deck with a muffled bang, stunning it for about two seconds.

That was all the time Hestia needed to send a gout of flame at the adult parasite. Deadlight and Antin joined her, firing repeatedly. That only seemed to anger it, though it did shy away from the fire, hissing and screeching. Having seen the way the creatures tended to fight, the survivors kept as far out of range of its tail as possible. Hoole was the one exception, getting too close in an effort to shoot it in the head. With a sound like a whip cracking, the tail slashed through the air and caught the trooper in the side. He tumbled across the deck and skidded to a halt by Pike’s research station, armor compromised and bleeding profusely.

Luke dove forward under a lunge and turned sharply. His lightsaber hummed as it whirled in the air and severed the deadly tail at its base. This time, he rolled away as the creature thrashed back in the direction of its attacker.

He didn’t have time to bother with the mental connection, or think about stormtroopers asking questions. He just popped up onto his feet and shouted, “Get down!” hoping his father would understand what he wanted to do.

When a crimson blade scythed through the smoke and flame over the heads of Hestia, Kreel, and Deadlight to bury itself in the insectoid horror’s side, Luke knew Vader had understood. Ignoring the warning pains in his shoulder muscle -- what hadn’t been pierced through by claws, anyway -- Luke called his father’s lightsaber to his hand. Keeping one blade up as a guard and holding the other outward, he edged closer.

The creature let out a tremulous scream that was part pain and part rage, and it crouched on all fours, preparing to jump. The floor shook with an answering roar from behind the door and for a moment all was still.

“What was that?” Kreel asked in a subdued voice.

“I don’t think we want to find out,” Luke grunted and swung both blades parallel.
The creature leaped, and there was a rush of cold, anger, fear, hatred that swept past Luke to brace it in the air, holding it frozen for a moment.

“Luke. End it.” Vader sounded almost as if he were straining.

One blade at the height of its head. One blade at the height of its arms. Luke poured all his strength into the blows, and even though there was a moment of resistance on the armor, both sheared through the wounded creature’s cardiovascular system and skull. The lightsabers did not completely sever the top of its head or its torso, but it was enough. Luke disengaged the blades and fell to one knee, gritting his teeth against a wave of pain in his arm and shoulder.
Yeah, that didn’t do me any favors.

“Are, are we done?” he gasped, trying to stand.

Vader took a few steps forward to retrieve his weapon and pull Luke to his feet, ignoring the troopers still standing. “Yes. It is time to return to the surface.”

Antin moved to check Hoole’s injuries, pack already open to stabilize him, and Hestia moved back towards Pike. Deadlight began reloading his weapon, and Kreel stood uncomfortably near Vader and Luke, pointedly not looking at either of them.

Well I hope you have a plan for when we get back, because Kreel is starting to get suspicious, Luke thought, a little resigned and very tired.

Your shields are down again. That will be your undoing should you encounter the emperor. Vader sounded sharp, irritable, but possibly as tired as Luke.
Somehow, Luke doubted his father was as sleep-deprived as he was.

The Force flared in warning and Pike pulled away from Hestia. He tripped on the discarded tranquilizer gun and fell heavily against his portable computer with a cry of pain. An ominous beeping echoed through the chamber, and the generator flared to life.

The door strained a moment, and the room shook. With a great, creaking, moan, the door began to lift upwards, exposing a ribbon of inky blackness below. Something inside hissed, low and sibilant.

“Father?” Luke murmured, taking a step back. Vader did not look at him, but pushed back alongside him.

“Run.”

Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Chapter Text

A Dark Lord of the Sith telling someone to run, in any context, is cause for concern.
Moreso when the context is that of a derelict ghost ship infested with nightmare creatures, and the abrupt opening of a door that was likely sealed for a reason.

Hestia abandoned the prisoner and knelt next to Hoole. “Can he stand?” she asked grimly.
They didn’t have time to carry him.

Antin sealed the bacta patches across Hoole’s lacerated side and made a noncommittal sound, made sharp by urgency. “He’ll have to.”
It was only a temporary fix, like Skywalker’s shoulder. If he managed to run with the rest of them, Hoole risked doing greater damage to himself.
If he didn’t run, he’d meet a far worse fate.

The progress of the door was mercifully slow, but the being inside was growing impatient. Four spindly digits curved up from the blackness, wrapping around the edge of the metal. Each one was easily as long as Luke’s leg.

“She has grown,” Vader said dully.

“She?” Luke gasped, “Is that the mother?”

“Back to the shuttle,” Vader replied tersely.

No one felt like arguing.

The door buckled and dented where the monstrous fingers curled around it, and a rattling hiss built steadily, working its way into a roar. The ship groaned and shook around them, protesting the abuse, but the humans had no intention of staying to see whether the structure would hold. Vader began moving very purposefully towards the entrance, with Kreel hot on his heels and Luke just after them.

“Come on, man,” Antin slapped Hoole on the shoulder, “It’s now or never for you.”

“Great,” Hoole growled through gritted teeth, “Thanks, doc.”

Luke glanced back, “Someone grab Pike!” he called.

“You’re welcome to try,” Kreel pushed past him, radiating tension and a healthy dose of fear. “Not sure he’ll let you though!”

A flash of anger burned in Luke’s gut for a moment. They were just going to abandon the prisoner. Of course they were. Because these weren’t his Rogues, and he couldn’t just change what they’d been molded into with a snap of his fingers.
If he really was going to be trapped aboard Vader’s ship indefinitely with them because of his foolish bargain, the only positive aspect would be the prospect of what Han used to call his “Optimism Plague”.

Pike rolled to his knees, wriggling his way out of the bonds. He stared up at the chitinous limbs beginning to force their way out of the gap. “Mag-nificent,” he breathed, “Oh look at you!”

“Pike, run! Run or you die!” Luke hollered, then followed the other six out.

“Not if I’m still,” Pike beamed and stretched out his hand towards the opening door. “Not if I’m quiet. You all, you make so much noise...they don’t like that. I don’t wish it on you, but it’s so fascinating to watch! If only Qeward could be here to see this!”

The end of a long, smooth head, like the other parasites they’d encountered so far, appeared in the dark space, then smashed upward. A broad, elaborate crest of armor or bone tore two feet into the metal and forced it open quicker than the controls usually allowed.

“You aren’t like the others at all! You must be...yes, some kind of hive queen!” Pike gleefully reached for a data recorder.

The queen’s wide skull tipped ever so slightly to one side. Two smaller, almost stunted appendages curled and uncurled reflexively at her chest level, then she swung one arm to the side. The last thoughts in Pike’s mind were, “We were right, Qeward, we were right!”

The hive queen forced her way out of the doorway, hissing with displeasure as a double row of spiny dorsal tubes caught the frame. She tracked the source of the greater disturbance and sensed the vibrations in the deck as their feet clattered across. She sensed no activity from her drones, or her eggs, and the deep, implacable rage that had been her nature since her gruesome birth blazed high. These intruders would die swiftly, and she would rebuild. She would evolve. Just as she had done before.

For all that none of them were in the most optimal of conditions, the humans managed an impressive show of speed. After his previous observations, and his theory that his father’s legs were somehow wounded or damaged, Luke was rather unnerved to discover just how fast Darth Vader could move. Kreel and Deadlight ran at his heels, blasters up and ready for something -- anything -- to jump out at them. Antin kept a steady jog beside Luke after them, periodically reaching to his belt to check one of the bacta injectors to make sure it hadn’t fallen out. No doubt they would have need of it soon. Hestia was beginning to lag behind, clutching her heavy flamethrower, but they all still outpaced Hoole.

The first obstacle came suddenly. The queen rammed through the narrow doorway they’d fled through, taking part of the wall with her. The Kiva groaned as if in agonized protest, and debris catapulted through the air. Darth Vader did not even stop as he lifted his hand, redirecting the shards of metal back at the monstrous creature. The queen pulled its face back under a carapace-like shell extending from its crest, barely avoiding the projectiles.
Luke dodged one larger piece of the wall, and shoved another out of the way with the Force. His ribs and shoulder screamed at him, keeping him from focusing enough to attack the queen as Vader had.

Kreel had been close enough to Vader that he’d been able to avoid the debris altogether, as had Deadlight. Antin simply hopped to one side and managed to keep his balance when the floor shook with the impact of the larger pieces, and kept running. It was sheer luck more than anything that kept Hestia from being hit as the queen recovered and retracted her face from the shell again. Hestia dropped her flamethrower to free up her movement and hastened to catch up with the others.

Hoole stumbled, blood loss making his feet unsteady. A massive, whiplike tail with a piercing stinger as long as his arm cracked through the air and buried itself in the plates a scant two inches to his left.
“Holy kriff-!”

“Move it!” Hestia screamed over her shoulder.

When they passed the chamber where Forien and the last two members of his party had died, the queen seemed almost to pause for a fraction of a second, as if somehow sensing the death of her apparent offspring within the room. She picked up speed, tossing her head with a long, rattling shriek.

Vader veered around the pillars he and Luke had so recently stabilized. He could have easily brought them down on the queen’s head, and the ceiling with them. It would not trouble him unduly to leave the others behind in the inevitable fallout, although Kreel was a good soldier, and his loss would be regrettable. As long as Luke was extracted in one piece, the others were purely secondary in priority. Unfortunately, Luke was a good four paces behind him, and unlikely to have the speed or stamina required to clear the doorway before the ceiling came down. He would have to wait until the boy was out.

Kreel and Deadlight practically flew through the chamber entrance back out into the broad hangar, still holding steady under its coating of the bio-material, but shuddering under the weight of the queen’s approach. Antin followed, shoving Luke ahead of him. Hestia had nearly made it to the door when she appeared to have suddenly the same idea that Darth Vader had considered. Before anyone could stop her, she whirled, raising her smaller, standard-issue blaster, and fired at the pillars.
The bolt splashed harmlessly off, ultimately worthless as an attempt.

“Don’t stop!” Hoole snapped, shoving her forward. His pause was a costly one.

There was barely enough time for Luke to turn and pull Hestia through the door. The queen lunged, jaws wide.
Mercifully, it was too quick for Hoole to do more than let out an abbreviated Huttese curse. The queen snapped her head to the side, shaking him like an anooba that had caught a scurrier.

Luke put on a burst of speed and didn’t let go of Hestia’s arm until they’d nearly reached the hub where the three previous hangars all joined. This would be the riskier part, he was sure. In a wide open space like this, that monster would have considerably more freedom to move. Luke doubted that the low doorway they’d just passed through would hinder her much, considering the way she’d just smashed through the last wall.

He’d hardly finished that thought when the wall and door behind them exploded.
The queen all but flew out into the open space, so quickly that she skidded across the deck, and her claws sent sparks flying across the metal with an earsplitting screech. There wasn’t time to catch the debris, or even to block it.

“Left left left!” Luke hollered, turning sharply and ducking under a swinging tail.

The queen whirled and snapped at them as they darted across the cargo hold. The humans’ only advantage was that they were just numerous enough that the queen could not decide on any one particular target. So long as she was indiscriminately lunging at one and then another, there was a small margin of protection for those she was forgetting. It brought their chances of survival up a little, from, say, one in six hundred to one in two hundred.
Luke counted that as an improvement.

There was, however, another obstacle ahead that he was a bit less optimistic about:
The pit.

It was too wide to jump, even with the Force, as Luke figured it. Getting across the narrow ledge along the side would be time-consuming and leave them vulnerable. Move too quickly and they ran the risk of losing their footing and plunging into the collapsed place. Move too slowly and the queen could pick them off at her leisure. Luke found himself flashing back to the escape from the Death Star -- ha. He did sort of wonder whether Vader had known about him then, considering how quickly the bounty went up on his head. Had he reviewed the reports with some kind of chagrin at his offspring’s decidedly anti-Imperial behavior? What had been going through his mind when they’d briefly encounter each other in that hangar?

Luke discarded the questions as not pertinent to the situation -- he’d had plenty of time to stew over those during the last couple weeks anyway -- and seized on the relevant memory. There had been something like a chasm within the Death Star when he and Leia had gotten separated from Han and Chewbacca -- Chewie is going to be so mad at me for this-! I’m sorry, Chewie, I’m so sorry, you were right, I am exactly as reckless as Han -- and he’d stolen the grappling hook from the stormtrooper utility belt he’d been wearing.

“If anyone has a grappling hook, now’s the time to use it,” he warned.

His father appeared to have another plan of action entirely.

It didn’t even take twenty seconds. A stifling, crawling darkness washed over them, leaving Luke to feel as though claws were wrapping around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides.
Wait, Father, what are you-?!
The thought was barely across the bond before he was ripped off the deck plating and sent hurtling through the air. By the panicked shouts of Hestia, Antin, and Deadlight, he guessed he wasn’t the only one.

It was only a last-minute grasp at the Force that allowed Luke to land on his feet, though the momentum sent him tumbling a little further. Gasping as his wounded shoulder was unpleasantly jarred, Luke staggered to his feet and looked back. The queen swung her tail around, clearly intending to crush Vader where he stood. The Sith stepped to one side at the last moment and caught the beast with a glancing blow. It was not enough to do more than scratch her, only angering her further.

She lashed out with one of her outer arms. Like Vader’s attack, hers also fell short of the mark. The massive talons caught in his cape as he turned to move out of range, and scored one of his legs down the armor, revealing gleaming metal underneath. Vader did not appear to react. He gathered the Force around him and leapt, kicking off the wall and landing hard beside the others.

“Do not stop moving!” he chastised, pushing Luke between the shoulders when he did not immediately comply.

Luke remembered where they were now. This was the smaller storage space directly beneath the remains of the crew’s quarters, which meant that they were nearly to the ladder. The thunderous crash behind them suggested that the creature had chosen to pursue them past the pit. Considering her size, it wouldn’t take long for her to climb in and out of it.

Behind him, Hestia screamed.

The queen had made good time. In the rush of adrenaline and the creaking roar of a ship being subjected to more motion than was advisable, it had been surprisingly easy to cover the sound of her approach. She had lunged for the white-shell in the back, but her angle had been just a little off. Unable to reach her prey, the queen ejected her inner jaw. It snapped shut around Hestia’s left arm, crushing it.

“No!” Hestia tried in vain to dislodge her arm, feet scrabbling for purchase on the deck as the jaw retracted, drawing her closer to the queen’s monstrous head.

There was a sharp, angry buzz, and a beam of light shot past her peripheral vision, hidden somewhat by the limited view from her helmet. Her arm burned, crushed and mangled, and then suddenly she was moving again. Skywalker’s good arm was around her waist and he was moving fast.

“Sorry,” he gasped, “It's not pretty, but you’ll live.”

When Hestia risked a glance back, she saw that there was still something white and red, dripping, and hanging from the monster’s inner mouth.
Oh...
There wasn’t enough time to think about what that meant.

“Skywalker.”
When they reached the ladder, Vader nodded upward in a sharp gesture, and took a guard position.

There wasn’t time to question it, but Luke stared searchingly at his father for a moment before nodding and shooting up the ladder in a Force-assisted leap. He turned and held out a hand.
“Come on! Next one!” he shouted.

Deadlight scrambled up after him and unslung his rifle from his back, ready to cover if the queen attacked again. Kreel followed quickly, and Luke didn’t really have many qualms about pushing him to one side in favor of holding out his hand to Hestia.

“Don’t think about it, just jump,” he called.

Her first try missed, as she’d reflexively reached with her left arm, not seeming to realize it wasn’t there. On the second try, Luke caught her right hand and pulled her up. Darth Vader all but flew out of the hole after her, pushing them all aside to lead the charge for the exit.
Antin was halfway up the ladder when the queen attacked again. His saving grace was that her crest caught on the lower ceiling, temporarily halting her in time for him to exit the hold, uttering a long string of Ubese curses.

The floor buckled under their feet with the impact of a twelve-foot alien monstrosity ramming into it, determined to break through.

“The tunnel’s going to collapse!” Kreel shouted, “Kriffin’ move it!”

Luke’s shoulder felt like it was on fire. He’d definitely pulled it in a way injured muscle fibers weren’t supposed to go when he’d saved Hestia. Every time his foot hit the deck, it jarred the wounds, making it difficult to breathe between his ribs and his shoulder. But he would deal with it later. He’d managed to get a mile or two in a snowstorm in a similar condition -- not that he would’ve survived had it not been for Han. Han, I’m so sorry. I’m not giving up, I promise, I just have to find a new way to fight.

The tunnel seemed shorter than he remembered. Perhaps that was because they’d been walking nearly single file, silent and slow when they’d first arrived. Now, however, there wasn’t much point in staying quiet. They’d already woken up Mama and she was very definitely out for blood.

Vader opened a wider comm channel to contact the shuttle on the surface. “For your sake, the shuttle had best be prepared to launch before we arrive,” he snarled, agitation evident in his voice.

It was a near thing.

The pilots of the shuttle were, luckily, a bit too fond of their own skins to not notice the ominous shaking of the hill they’d landed on, and had already gotten the pre-flight checks done and the engines warmed up before the call came in.

The shaking of the ground had knocked snow and ice into the entrance of the tunnel, blocking the way. Vader didn’t even bother with the Force this time. He and Luke slashed through the blockade with their lightsabers, melting most of it, and they pushed through. Behind them, the queen was suddenly dealing with far more confined quarters than she had been used to, and her progress was, mercifully, slowed.

The shuttle was airborne with the ramp extended by the time they’d all cleared the ice. Despite the haste of the moment, it did not escape Luke’s notice that the troopers intentionally slowed their steps so that Vader entered the shuttle first. Well, Vader and Luke, considering the Sith had caught him by the upper arm and bodily hauled him into the hold with him. The others quickened their pace as soon as the two Force wielders were inside.
Luke didn’t particularly care for that. Why should Vader’s life have more value than his soldiers, or his soldiers’ lives less? Or was this an example of the almost fanatical loyalty he’d heard stories about?

Vader did not release his arm even after the landing ramp retracted and the sounds of a small avalanche were drowned out by the engines. Hestia, Antin, Deadlight and Sergeant Kreel moved to the troop hold in silence. Vader went the other way, pulling Luke into the co*ckpit with him.

“Hail the Executor,” he commanded, before they even broke atmosphere.

A thin, solemn-faced man wearing an admiral’s uniform appeared as a small hologram on the control panel. Luke guessed that this was the Piett he’d heard about. Vader didn’t give the man a chance to speak.

“The moment this shuttle is in orbit, fire on the transmitted coordinates,” he said tersely.

“As you wish, my lord,” Piett nodded sharply, and gestured as if he were signalling someone out of sight.

The Executor hung like a waiting leviathan in the orbit of Mygeeto. Luke stared up at it with a muted sense of dread, both remembering his feverish escape from Bespin and understanding that there would be no such escape for him this time.
He had known from the moment he’d sensed his father’s presence on the planet that it would most likely end this way. All his hasty Anooba’s Bargain had done was ensure that he wasn’t walking onto the Super Star Destroyer in binders. He maintained an illusion of control over his own fate that way, though it remained to be seen how long that would last.

There was a certain irony, considering what he’d just barely escaped, in the fact that Luke couldn’t help but think of himself as being about to walk into a dragon’s den. Keep your wits about you, Skywalker. If you want to help your friends, Father won’t be easy to fool.
But I’ll wait and see. There’s a little good in him still, there has to be. And I’m not ready to stop fighting. Skywalkers don’t give up their freedom that easily.

He watched the turbolaser power up and wondered if the hive queen had made it to the surface yet. Would she make her way towards the city? He couldn’t help but be glad that Vader had ordered evacuations before they went looking for the Kiva. At least he knew Aeshpe and her parents would be safe that way.
The bright green bolt shot past the shuttle and towards the coordinates of the remains of the Kiva.

Even from orbit the explosions were visible, though they looked like no more than a cheerful twinkle, masking the true size of the conflagration.

“That’s it then,” Luke felt curiously detached from it all as he stared, “It’s over.”

The hand on his uninjured shoulder both steadied and restrained him. “No, my son,” Vader answered softly, “This is only the beginning.”

Chapter 20: Chapter 20

Chapter Text

The control room is quiet, a welcome respite from the screaming of the wind in the shaft behind him. But the quiet doesn’t sit well, it feels false and expectant. His own footsteps echo too loudly across the floor panels, heightening his unease. The Force is resonating, a warning and a promise and something almost familiar all at once, but he’s not sure why--

There is a musical hum and a shrill warning in the Force and he barely has time to raise his blade. How does a man that big just disappear so easily? Darth Vader bears down on him, forcing him to retreat back outside onto the gantry, and it is now more evident than ever that this was never a duel, or even a fair fight. The dark lord has been toying with him, testing him, and it seems he is beginning to run out of patience.

One particularly vicious swing knocks him flat, metal stairs digging into his back, strained muscles screaming. Now there is a lightsaber inches from his face and he knows he’s about to die.

“You are beaten ,” Darth Vader says, stern and measured, “It is useless to resist! Don’t let yourself be destroyed as Obi-wan did!”

But that is the wrong thing to say. Now that he is reminded of Obi-wan, of his father’s old friend, his mentor, determination rises in him.

“Are you so sure?” he asks, and then he is standing again. “Are you so sure you have it in you to destroy me?”

The gantry grows narrow as they move along it, and the wind is shrill in his ears. They trade blows, blade against blade, and the longer he stays on his feet the more evenly matched they seem to become. He sees cracks in Darth Vader’s armor, small, but visible. They are not yet enough to break, but he begins to see the pressure points, the right places to prod.

“If only you knew the power of the Dark Side ,” Vader hisses.

“If only you remembered the warmth of the Light , ” he retorts. “Or do you, even now?”

Vader is angry now, the duel resumes at a furious pace. He does not want to face the truth, nor even hear it. And then, all too soon, there is no more room. There is no escape.

Save one.

He looks down into the soft glow far below him and makes his choice. He will not go back alone. In a defiant gesture, he tosses his lightsaber away, to the side. He does not intend to harm, nor to kill. He kicks off of the platform and before Darth Vader can react, he takes hold of his arm and knocks him off balance.

In the instant before they both fall over the railing, out of the trap, he smiles.

“You have run for long enough, Father.”

Luke woke to blurred vision and slowed, clumsy movement. It took him a moment to realize that he was in a bacta tank. Again . The thick gel stopped up his ears, muffling everything around him, but the Force was clear to the point of bluntness. He could sense his father in the room, watching him. The big, dark blur on the other side of the glass was also a decent indicator of the man’s presence.

This was the third time Luke had woken up this way, not that he could accurately pinpoint how long it had been since they’d left the shuttle behind. By this time, he could feel that his ribs were decidedly less tender than the last time he’d been awake. That probably meant that the worst of the damage had been repaired. His arm was in some kind of sling, even in the tank, to immobilize it. No doubt the hole in his shoulder was going to take a while longer. But the Imperials hoarded the highest quality bacta for themselves -- something that made Luke more than a little uncomfortable with his current position -- and it probably wouldn’t be more than a few weeks before the worst of that had healed as well.

Feeling a little impertinent -- after what he’d lived through, Luke thought he had a right to be -- he sluggishly raised his good hand in a cheeky salute. It was impossible to tell if Vader reacted or not.

Frankly, even if he hadn’t been trying to squint through a tank full of bacta, Luke wouldn’t have been able to see a visible reaction anyway.

It is...good to see you awake.

His father’s voice seemed to echo slightly in his head. That was likely just a side effect of the bacta.

Thanks. And surprisingly, he meant it. Where are we?

The medbay, Vader replied archly.

There was very little chance that he’d misinterpreted Luke’s question. Which meant that he was either being deliberately obtuse, or else he was letting slip that bizarre sense of humor Luke had only barely glimpsed before.

The medbay where , though? He tried again.

This time, the dark lord’s mood was more easily read as he sardonically answered, On my ship.

Oh very funny. Where are we in space ? Core worlds? Mid-Rim? Outer Rim? Come on, Father, it’s not like I could call my friends and ask them to come pick me up, even if I wanted to.

Vader supposed the boy had a point.

We are in the Outer Rim , he conceded. It is...better to maintain some distance from the Core while you are still recovering.

He would not be able to hide Luke from the Emperor. That had long since proven to be a fool’s errand. Soon word would reach Palpatine that Luke Skywalker had been captured -- if he hadn’t already heard by now. The Sith Lord would not tolerate the father and son having any time to reconcile and bond with each other. He knew that Luke was a threat to his reign. To the galaxy, those who had heard his name would assume he was just one star pilot. To Darth Sidious, his name alone heralded the beginning of the end. The son of a man who he had worked so very hard to bury.

A man who might not be as dead as he was meant to be.

Darth Vader had attempted a coup once before, when he had first learned that his child had survived. It had failed, although the emperor had been pleased that he was “finally behaving like a Sith”. But still, Vader counted it a learning experience. Betrayal was the way of the Sith. If you survived a first failure, it was in your better interests to improve your second attempt. And Vader had greater incentive to succeed than he had before. His son was no longer an abstract concept to him. A distant star to follow, to capture. He was here , real.

Luke was an adult, a man with his own convictions and opinions. Likes and dislikes his father knew nothing about. And yet when he looked at his son, all he could see was how young he really was. Vader cursed the soft sentiments, creeping like mold across his heart and mind. Keeping the boy here was dangerous. His grip on the Dark Side had to be unshakable if they were to have any chance of defeating the emperor. He could not afford even a moment’s weakness.

As if his weakest point was not staring back at him, in the flesh, from behind the tank’s glass.

Even without the aid of the Force, Luke seemed to pick up on his concern.

How much time do we have? he asked gravely.

Not enough.

There would be time to prepare him. Perhaps even time to teach him to strengthen his mental shields. But Luke was stubborn. As strong-willed as his mother. He would not learn to wield the Dark Side in time to save him from the emperor.

Something else would have to be done.

Darth Vader turned away from the sight of his son, all too vulnerable in the bacta tank.

“He will not take you from me,” he vowed quietly.

Behind him, Luke tilted his head and looked vaguely confused. He had heard his father say something , but the bacta in his ears had muted it into a faint rumble.

Father?

Vader shook his head, even though he knew Luke wouldn’t be able to make it out.

Rest. We are nearing Vjun.

The next time Luke opened his eyes, he wasn’t sure where he was. It wasn’t the bacta tank, he was sure of that. As he shifted his weight, he heard the rustle of fabric. Someone had placed him in an actual bed. Not a prisoner’s bunk, or a soldier’s berth. A bed . This was not what Luke had expected to find upon waking.

A faint hiss, almost a sizzle, caught his attention. Luke sluggishly turned his head towards the source of the noise and froze.

As long as he had been staring at the polished black ceiling, he had been able to believe he was still on the Executor . But the narrow windows set into the wall quickly put that idea to rest.

Sickly yellow clouds gathered beyond the glass, dropping some kind of caustic rain against a force-field over the walls and windows. A flicker of lightning squirmed through the clouds with a rumble of thunder in relentless pursuit. An acid storm?

Vjun.

Darth Vader had said they were nearing Vjun. Luke knew very little about the planet, but he had once gone over a brief report with the members of Red Squadron in his first training on how to scout for bases. The acid rain and acid deserts had quickly crossed Vjun off their list of potential hideaways. Luke was, in hindsight, grateful they’d made that decision if Vader frequented the place. Unless he’d just picked this planet to retreat to because nobody ever went there.

Luke sat up and slowly stretched his arms. There was a residual stiffness in his arm and shoulder, but the pain was gone. No doubt it would take practice to regain his full range of motion. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He wasn’t wearing his clothes from Mygeeto. That probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. They’d been pretty well ruined by those...creatures. Even so, black silk pajamas were the last thing Luke had expected to wake up in. Who had dressed him?! And for that matter, where had the clothes come from?

If they were occupying someone’s home, Luke thought he might feel bad about Vader requisitioning someone’s pajamas. Although, it did make for a wonderfully bizarre mental image.

Citizen, the Empire demands your sleepwear. It is a matter of some urgency.

Force, he hoped that hadn’t happened.

Luke shook the absurd thoughts off and slid carefully out of the bed. It was taller than he’d expected, and he landed a little less gracefully than he’d meant to. A black duvet -- of course it was black, everything was black, apparently -- caught on his heel and was dragged to the floor with him.

“Ow,” he grumbled, rubbing his shin.

His belt lay neatly over the back of a wingback chair that was entirely too soft looking. Naturally, none of his weapons were attached to it. That would’ve been too easy. Across the front of the chair lay a simple black tunic and trousers. Well, simple in design, only. Luke gingerly touched the fabric and suspected he’d have to refinance a moisture farm to afford something like that. Clearly, the outfit had been left deliberately, and the implication was obvious.

“Oh come on,” Luke muttered under his breath. “I agreed not to make escape attempts. Nobody said I was going to have to dress like him!”

On the other hand, exploring an unfamiliar environment in pajamas was not at all appealing to Luke. He could begrudgingly admit that the clothes were comfortable. There were probably boots of some variety in the uncomfortably opulent room, but Luke didn’t know where to start looking, and he wasn’t sure it was a productive use of his time. He found a pair of slightly oversized, flat shoes on the other side of the bed and resigned himself to them. Better than being barefoot, he supposed.

Somewhere nearby, he could sense his father. And Vader was agitated. To say that boded ill was a gross understatement. Luke was about to figure out whether or not the chamber door was locked when it abruptly opened from the other side. A red Threepio unit stood in the doorway, wearing the perpetually surprised look of the line.

“Ah! You are awake,” she said. “My master informed me that you had regained consciousness. I am to bring you to the library at once.”

Just the word “library” was enough to make Luke shudder. “What “master”?” he asked, “Where am I?”

The droid ignored his questions. “Please follow me, young master. We must not keep him waiting.”

“No,” sighed Luke, buckling his belt, “Guess not.”

The halls beyond “his” room were as luxurious and as monochrome as the chamber he’d left behind. The only breaks in the uniform black and greys were occasional paintings of a beautiful lakeside villa. It seemed like a strange thing to find in such a foreboding place. The farther from his room they got, the more Luke noticed that the halls became more utilitarian and sparse. It was as if only parts of the building had been decorated. A deep chill seemed to pervade the dark stone around him, as though the cold of Mygeeto had followed him even here. The Dark Side lingered here, old and resentful and unforgotten, like the cave on Dagobah. Luke was amazed he hadn’t sensed it immediately upon waking.

The droid led him through several identical corridors, devoid of life or any distinguishing marks. The sense of Darth Vader’s presence grew stronger as they went, until it spread out around them like the coils of some great serpent. They halted at the heart of the coils, at the base of a wide set of stairs that led to an open gallery-like place, full of data stacks. They blinked black and red, and Luke’s nails bit into his palms.

I hope Aeshpe is alright.

“Young Master Luke, as instructed,” the droid announced in her perversely cheerful voice. Without awaiting a reply, she turned and shuffled away, leaving Luke to stand awkwardly at the base of the steps.

Vader stood with his back to him, bent over some kind of desk or table. He did not turn, or verbally acknowledge Luke’s presence. Nevertheless, Luke sensed that he was meant to approach. Cautiously, he ascended the stairs and stopped an arm’s length from Vader.

Several datapads and ancient books lay open on the desk before him, as well as a holo-map of the Outer Rim. Luke recognized one of the markers as Wild Space, and wondered what his father was doing. Was he curious about the origin of the creatures from the Kiva ? The ghost ship had drifted for a long time before crashing on Mygeeto. Had the parasites ever made it to other worlds? Luke hoped not. One encounter with the creatures was more than enough for one lifetime.

“I do not have the time to train you in lightsaber combat.” Vader spoke apropos of nothing. “The emperor knows of your capture. He will order me to bring you before him. I will not have you go unprepared.”

Luke winced. He’d known this was coming from the beginning. “You won’t defy him.”

It wasn’t a question. There weren’t enough cracks in his armor yet to let Anakin through.

“I am not yet strong enough,” Vader confirmed.

“Not alone, no,” Luke mused. He stared at the books and datapads without really seeing them. “Is he really stronger than you, then?”

“For now .”

There was a seething hatred bubbling just under the surface of the words. It clung like pitch to Luke’s own emotions, and he couldn’t help but agree with it.

Vader straightened and turned to gaze down at Luke. “You will not defeat the emperor without guidance,” he declared. “But you can destroy him. I told you once before that he has foreseen this.”

Luke curled his toes in the odd slip-on shoes and cringed. “I will not use the Dark Side,” he said firmly.

In an almost sarcastic tone, Vader retorted, “I am sure the emperor will appreciate your foolish conviction. It will make it that much easier for him to kill you if you do not submit to his will -- as I am certain you will not.”

They had only interacted face to face for a very little period of time. For Darth Vader to have already understood and seemingly accepted that Luke would never kneel to Palpatine despite this made Luke feel a little better about his Anooba’s Bargain.

“Not if you stand with me, Father,” Luke said. He was as surprised by the words as Vader seemed to be. Where had the challenge come from, so soon after waking?

“Together, we are stronger.”

Two mechanical breaths cycled, in and out, before Vader answered him. He switched off the holo-map and shut the open book. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Together.”

He turned away from the desk and swept past Luke with a brief gesture.

“Come. There is much to be done, and our time grows short.”

Luke stumbled after him, surprised by the sudden turn. “What exactly are we doing?”

Vader did not stop. He marched onward, barely slowing his steps to allow Luke to catch up, and did not stop until he had entered an antechamber filled with the grim-faced admiral and over thirty stormtroopers in peculiar armor. Not like storm troopers at all, when Luke looked closer. It was more like something from the Clone Wars. Were they clones?

“Welcome home, General,” one of them said gruffly. “This the runt, then?”

“No worries,” said another in an identical voice, “We’ll show the little devil the ropes..”

Vader pushed Luke forward gently. “I told you, my son. This is only the beginning.”

Chapter 21: Epilogue

Chapter Text

One month later
Mygeeto

When the library finally reopened, after the city was released from the quarantine, there was a sudden influx of patrons. Many of them were irritated that the library had been closed at all, no matter what the circ*mstances, and some were just stir crazy from having been practically under house arrest while the Kiva was destroyed and the northern plains were “cleansed”.

With the amount of beings pushing in and out of the entryway, no one really noticed the young woman slip through the crowd. She kept the hood of her parka raised, which -- while not entirely uncommon, especially for those only there to pick up holds -- concealed more of her face than the average parka did.

The place seemed nice enough. Bright lights, effective heating, cheerful librarians. But the girl thought something felt off about it all, something she couldn’t quite put a name to.

Perhaps it was simply because this was the last place anyone had seen Luke Skywalker.

Initial worries among members of Command that perhaps he had taken another unscheduled “jedi trip” had quickly turned to outright panic when the Alliance spies reported the Executor being spotted over Mygeeto. When Commander Skywalker didn’t report in after thirty-six hours, they fretted. When his X-wing came back without him, they feared the worst.

A month had passed, and the grand majority of the Alliance had given Luke up for dead. Wedge Antilles now commanded Rogue Squadron, which had only become more deadly in the past weeks as they now had a very personal vendetta against any and all Imperial craft. Speeches were made, contingencies set into effect, and the Alliance tried to move on.

But Princess Leia did not.

She was one of only four people who had seen the message that R2-D2 had brought back when the X-wing had returned without its pilot. She, Wedge, Chancellor Mothma, and General Rieekan had gathered in Luke’s quarters to watch the emergency message -- apparently recorded only three days after the Cloud City Incident -- in which a broken, haunted Luke Skywalker relayed to them the terrible truth about the Skywalker legacy.

Luke. The son of Darth Vader.

It defied all logic. How could that monster have ever fathered someone as gentle and kind as Luke? There wasn’t even a hint of talk of double agents or deep cover in the room once the recording had played twice and shut off. Luke had been such a dreadful liar that there was no chance that he’d known about this before Bespin. Leia had taken the barest bit of comfort in the irony that, in spite of his own father’s nature, Luke had chosen to follow the path of the Jedi and was quite possibly her closest friend. She was sure Vader did not approve. She hoped he’d fumed helplessly every time spies reported on their activities.

Wedge had been all for mounting a rescue mission, considering how terrified Luke had sounded when speaking about the prospect of being captured, of being forced to learn about the dark side or else possibly executed. But Mon Mothma and General Rieekan had reluctantly concluded that they did not have the manpower or firepower to challenge Darth Vader and retrieve Commander Skywalker.

The meeting had ended on a rather hopeless note, with all four swearing each other to secrecy.

Leia’s world, or what was left of it, was coming apart at the seams.

She wasn’t sure why she had come to the library on Mygeeto. Luke wasn’t going to be there, and for all she knew there would be heightened Imperial activity. Still, it had felt, over the last two days, as though this was the only place she could go. Now, as she avoided the front desk and glanced over a glowing directory on the wall, Leia wondered what she was looking for. Some trace that Luke had been here? Some kind of closure?

When she began to feel eyes on her, Leia realized she’d been standing in the lobby too long and took the turbolift up to one of the floors containing fiction. Somehow, this didn’t seem like the right place. Not that she could explain that feeling, but she didn’t think Luke had been here. Hoping to seem less conspicuous, Leia quickly snatched a datapad off of one of the shelves at random as a librarian pushing a hovercart walked by.

As she pretended to read the decidedly weird-fantasy novel, Leia kept her guard up. This was the second time the librarian had passed her, and she was beginning to suspect that she’d been recognized.

“Excuse me, miss, can I help you find something?” The librarian stopped the cart and smiled politely, but there was a weariness behind her eyes that Leia had seen in her own mirror. The woman had seen things she could never forget.

Dark eyes studied Leia’s face intently for a moment, and the princess’s gut told her that she needed to leave now.

“Oh, no thank you,” she said coolly, “I’m just browsing.”

The slightly older woman nodded, still smiling. “Of course. I think you’ll find, miss, that that particular saga makes much more sense if you read the tie-in novels first. I’ve got the first one here, if you’d like.” She took an old-fashioned flimsiplast book from her cart and held it out to Leia.

“Mind you,” she said thoughtfully as Leia took it, hoping to avoid suspicion, “It’s quite old. Things fall out of it all the time.” The librarian smiled one more time, then pushed her cart away a little more quickly than was perhaps necessary.

Was she going to report her? Leia took a deep breath and happened to glance down at the book in her hand. It was not a tie-in novel. In fact, it wasn’t even the same genre. It was some Old Republic period romance involving proud nobles and semi-comical misunderstandings. Leia vaguely remembered her aunts insisting that the book was required reading for young noblewomen, but she’d always managed to escape reading it.

A wave of somewhat forlorn nostalgia swept over her for a moment, and although she knew she needed to escape while she still could, Leia couldn’t help thumbing through the pages briefly, just for the feel of it.

A thin sheet of flimsi slipped out of the book and fluttered to the floor. Leia snatched it before it hit the carpet, and glanced around quickly. Well, the librarian had said it was old. But the page looked new. She glanced over the page and nearly dropped it again. Her heart pounded in her ears and her breath caught in her throat.

Impossible.

And yet-

And yet there it was, in bold, scribbled writing in front of her. Leia carefully folded the page several times and slipped it into her vest before setting the book back on the shelf at random and making her way outside as quickly as she could without attracting notice. Artoo beeped inquiringly as she hopped into the X-wing -- Luke’s X-wing -- to jump back to the Fleet, but she shook her head. She was wholly focused on memorizing the words on the page.

Leia:

Complications arose. Am alive, will remain so. Don’t be afraid
to trust librarian, she hides messages for me.

Rendezvous point remains unchanged.

Go to Dagobah if further explanation is required.

I’m not out of this fight yet.

Love you-

Luke.

Chapter 22: Bonus Features: Deleted Scene 1: "Forien Dies"

Chapter Text

“Sir?”

Tars stood off to the side of the knot of officers, stiff and formal but looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“You have something to report?” Vader rumbled, even as he waved the other officers off to locate Pike and Tover.

Tars nodded sharply. “Yes sir! We have security recordings, sir. Don’t know how much light they’ll shed on the whole sordid affair, but they might tell your men something they haven’t told me yet.”

He had not, in fact, looked over all of the tapes yet. He’d been so preoccupied with peripherally overseeing the other interrogations and making sure his daughter was actually here, actually safe and where he could see her, that he hadn’t had a chance. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to, really. Tars had seen all kinds of horrors during the Clone Wars, the worst being Umbara to his mind, and he’d been all too happy to leave that behind and settle on Mygeeto with Heloise (and shortly thereafter, Aeshpe).

He didn’t really want to have to see recordings of his little girl being hunted by some kind of unidentified organism that had killed several good acquaintances.

Unbeknownst to Tars, oddly similar thoughts had crossed Darth Vader’s mind. He was not certain he had any desire to watch his son being terrorized by the armored abominations in the reference room. But at the same time, if the recordings contained audio, he might be able to discover some clue as to the creatures’ origins.

It was not, he told himself, so that he could check to see whether Luke’s sudden and surprising acknowledgment of their relationship had been captured by the cameras. But if he were to find such evidence, of course he would have to confiscate the tapes. For safekeeping, of course. For all that he intended to publicly claim the boy eventually, it had to be admitted that father and son each had too many enemies at present -- one particular mutual thorn-in-the-side, really -- for that to be safe.

“Show me the tapes,” Vader snapped. He turned slightly to where Luke stood at his right hand -- where he always should have been, he allowed a moment to indulge a few what-ifs before returning to his task -- and grasped his shoulder in warning.

“Do not leave this alcove, Skywalker,” he commanded. “I will know if you do.”

Luke did not meet his eyes, but he made a tiny nod of understanding and frowned. Not quite proper, considering the present company, but it would have to do for the time being. There would be plenty of time to correct his boy’s abysmal grasp of protocol later.

Once the dark lord was several feet away, the collected soldiers and officers let out a breath they’d evidently all been holding. The lieutenant who had been briefly Force-choked -- and for questioning Luke, no less. Luke really wasn’t sure how he ought to feel about that besides mildly horrified -- turned a glare on him that would’ve been much more intimidating had his pale green eyes not been watering profusely.

“I suppose there was little enough risk of you making a grand and misguided attempt at an escape while Lord Vader was present,” he sneered, “But as he’s attending to other matters, I think we’ll just have to take some precautions, won’t we?” He signaled a stormtrooper, who took a pair of binders from his belt.

He narrowed his eyes at the trooper. “Class II binders, soldier? Really? This is Skywalker we’re dealing with. At least get some Class IV’s.”

“Lieutenant Forien, the security garrison doesn’t have anything higher than Class II binders,” protested the officer who had very nearly saluted Luke earlier.

“Are you joking, Officer...who are you, anyway?” Forien scoffed.

“Brask, sir. No, sir. We’re a rather small garrison, sir, and-”

“Oh spare me your excuses,” the lieutenant sighed. “At least tell me you’ve got shock collars.” He turned back to glance at Brask, who cringed and shook his head.

“No sir. We do have magbinders though.”

Luke stepped back and frowned. He didn’t want to admit it, but his blood ran cold at the thought of being put in magbinders. Despite his best efforts, memories of Nar Shadda and Grakkus the Hutt began to circle his mind and settle in his stomach like lead.

“Hm, no. I don’t think so,” he spat, easily dodging around a trooper, yet taking care not to leave the alcove.

He had no desire to test Vader’s word at this point.

Of course, odds were that Vader would have had him cuffed and probably interrogated eventually anyway. Luke couldn’t imagine the man just letting him walk freely the whole way on the Executor . He wasn’t even sure what would happen to him once they got to the super star destroyer. But for now, as long as Vader was not there to be overly intimidating, he had a little of his old spark back. Just let these bucketheads try to cuff him.

“Magbinders?” Lieutenant Forien asked drily, “That’s all you’ve got?” With a loud sigh, he turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Stars’ end, people, you are ludicrously unprepared! We shall have to do something about that.”

Luke scowled at them and ducked under the arm of the security trooper who had produced the magbinders. He could grab the man’s blaster and fight his way out...but there were too many civilians in the room. The trouble with blasters was that if you missed your target, you still hit something . Or someone. Luke wasn’t sure he could take that chance here. Instead, he dodged and circled and generally caused as much trouble for the soldiers as he could without actually fighting.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to be looking for Pike and Tover?” he asked pointedly.

“Frankly, rebel, you’re the more immediate threat right now,” said a decidedly frustrated officer, who just barely avoided getting clotheslined in the fracas.

The collected soldiers and officers were, in short, having a terrible time containing Skywalker.

Forien, however, despite being a blustering windbag overfond of his privileges, was no fool. Or, at least, not always. He had noticed that the boy was favoring his side. Likely the result of some injury. Further observation suggested that the Rebel looked exhausted. Perhaps he was suffering some form of sleep deprivation. A common enough tool for procuring information, where Forien was from. The prisoner’s concentration would be impaired, and it would be easier to catch him in lies or coax the truth out of him. The lieutenant was honestly surprised that Lord Vader had not already thought to question him.

Well, that’s what good, forward-thinking lieutenants were for, obviously.

Forien watched, waited until five personnel were attempting to subdue Skywalker at once -- and if half the rumors about Skywalker were true, even ten wasn’t nearly enough -- then while the Rebel was busy fending them off, Forien took advantage of his moment of distraction. He stepped forward and drove his fist into Skywalker’s injured side.

Luke doubled over with a gasp, clutching at his ribs. That was all the opening the soldiers needed to slip the magbinders on him. Grimacing with pain, he glared at the lieutenant from where he sagged in the stormtroopers’ grip. There was a nudge at the back of his mind, a faint inquiry that required an immediate answer. But Luke ignored it in favor of trying to ascertain whether the cracked rib was, in fact, now broken.

“Well now, “Commander” Skywalker,” Lieutenant Forien smirked, “Why don’t we have a little talk?”

Luke answered with some rather impressively foul Sullustan that Leia had learned from Nien Numb, the former smuggler.

“Tut tut!” Forien tsked mockingly, poking Luke hard in the ribs with each syllable. “Kiss your mother with that mouth, do you? I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better from Rebel scum, of course.” He pressed a button on the control switch Brask had given him.

Rather than locking together , as expected, the cuffs magnetized to the durasteel plating beneath them that covered the floor in each alcove.

Luke attempted to brace himself upright, but the soldiers released his arms and let him fall. The cuffs locked into place on either side of him, forcing him to his knees, surrounded by Imperials. The patrons across the lobby whispered and stared and Luke fought a wave of panic, humiliation, and outrage. He felt like an animal on display, all too reminiscent of being in Grakkus’s arena.Don't look at me! Stop looking at me like that! Luke didn’t know what was worse: this feeling of powerlessness, or knowing that that was probably all he had to look forward to for whatever remained of his life.

He assumed the soldiers had Vader’s approval to keep him restrained. Just because his father wanted him alive , it didn’t automatically mean he wanted him free .

“Now,” Forien made a thin little smile and bent slightly to look Luke in the eyes. “Let’s start over. How long were you planning this little….adventure?”

When Luke remained silent, the smile turned sharper. “You help no one by being stubborn, Skywalker. You’re a terrorist , with a higher body count than most generals I know. You’re already facing the death penalty.”

“I am aware of that possibility,” Luke answered sullenly.

Forien laughed. “ Possibility ? My, what an optimist! Young man, it is an eventuality . But you can decide whether it will be quick or...drawn-out.” Then, a little more impatiently, he said, “People are dead , and you know why. You brought the parasites into the library.”

“No!”

“Didn’t you tell Lord Vader that you did so? We all heard you,” Forien hissed. “You’re not fooling anyone! You brought the parasites into the library, and you tested them on the patrons. What was so important about this library? Why did the Rebels plan this strike?”

The rebel drew in a sharp breath through his teeth and scowled. “You obviously weren’t paying attention earlier,” he hissed, “Did the lack of oxygen while m- Vader was choking you get to your brain?”

For a moment, the slip went unnoticed as Forien’s face twisted in anger and he raised a hand as if to backhand Luke. Officer Brask stepped in quickly.

“Sir!” he protested, “This is not a holding cell, this is a library! You are in public!” He shot a discreetly sympathetic look at Luke.

With a disdainful look over his shoulder at the patrons, the lieutenant returned to questioning Luke. But it was clear that, after it had bounced off of the proverbial wall a few times, he’d noticed Luke’s verbal slip, and he was determined to wrest more information from him now that his curiosity was piqued.

“You seem rather familiar with Lord Vader, for a Rebel. You’ve had run-ins with him in the past, haven’t you?” Forien hoped the boy wasn’t a deep-cover agent. That would make things unnecessarily complicated -- though it would mean Skywalker was a tremendously good actor if the Rebels didn’t even suspect him.

“Run-ins,” Luke twisted his features into a pained grimace. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Now, I wonder,” said Forien, “What would make Lord Vader inclined to listen to someone like you ? Perhaps, given his unusual abilities, he was able to sense your involvement in this fiasco and is waiting to trip you up. He does like to play cat-and-mouse every now and again.”

Luke flinched at this. Then he craned his neck to squint at the man and set his jaw. “I have nothing to say to you.”

This went on for several minutes. Thrice more Forien repeated his accusations and thrice more Luke kept his answers short or non-existent, saying nothing more than he’d already said before during the briefing. But it was getting more difficult. He was acutely aware that he had neither eaten nor slept in a considerable amount of time and it was beginning to show. His concentration was wavering. Between questions about the parasites and whether he’d colluded with Pike and Tover, Forien would sprinkle in questions about how Luke knew Vader, evidently meant to trip him up with a change in subject.

The insistent demand for answers along the connection at the back of his mind -- the one that Luke had been denying the existence of for so long -- flared up stronger than before. Lack of sleep compounded with pain and left Luke blinking, trying to sort out what was verbal and what was mental.

Luke.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now, you’re the reason I’m even on medical leave,” he mumbled, perhaps a little childishly. His eyes widened when he realized he’d spoken out loud.

“Is that so? Now that’s a curious thing to say!” Lieutenant Forien raised one eyebrow. “Would you prefer to talk when Lord Vader returns? I don’t expect that will go very well for you. Not that I’m a man who involves himself in gossip, but scuttlebutt around the Executor is that you came out rather the worse in your last encounter with him. Must’ve been something serious if the Rebels actually put you on medical leave.” With a tone of feigned sympathy, he squatted opposite Luke. “That must have made you angry,” he said in a reasonable tone. “Angry enough to want to do something foolish, perhaps? Like strike at an Imperial world to spite Lord Vader?”

Luke almost laughed at that. “Oh yes, because I'm a troubled kid in my rebellious phase. I’m acting on misdirected resentment and trauma as an unconscious cry for help, is that what you want me to say?” Wait, probably shouldn’t have phrased it like that. But he’s the one talking like I’m a misguided kid. Maybe he won’t notice?

Luke, your thoughts are...loud and disjointed. What are you doing?

Vader sounded equally curious and suspicious, but not quite as harsh and alien when his voice was in Luke’s head.

Luke realized that, on reflection, that had been one of the weirder sentences to cross his mind of late.

Seconds later, it also occurred to him that his attempts to put the barriers back up between their minds were shaky at best and wouldn’t hold him out if he really wanted in. He wondered whether that meant his father knew what was going on. It probably did. So why was he asking? Didn't he approve this?

Luke, answer me!

This was sharper, more imperious, and Luke didn’t think it would be a good idea to ignore him.

Your lieutenant hits hard for someone so skinny , he answered back, short and a little bit bitter.

His focus wavered and he tried to split his attention between Vader and Forien, but he knew that if this kept up for much longer, he was likely to slip up and accidentally say something...personal...out loud.

If you don’t want your interrogators knowing Lord Vader fathered a Jedi agitator, you might want to -

He paused, and for a half second wondered what he was actually asking. - well, that’s up to you, I guess, he added, a little more resigned than he’d intended.

There, if Vader wanted to do anything about it, he could come deal with the matter himself. Luke doubted he would, unless the embarrassment of having a Rebel son was enough to motivate him.

He was not prepared for the veritable tempest of outrage that screamed over the bond between them and he flinched back mentally and physically, desperately trying to erect barriers before the rolling emotions overtook him. The lights flickered overhead, and there were fearful murmurs across the room.

“Oh,” Luke whispered, “That’s not good.”

They all heard the thundering footsteps before they saw him. On instinct, Luke tugged at the cuffs, hoping in vain to budge them just enough to scramble back, maybe get his back to a wall. But, of course, the magbinders did not move and he remained caught in a kneeling position. A wall of cold slammed into the alcove, and even the stormtroopers were shivering.

Then he was there , and it struck Luke that from his place on the floor, Vader looked bigger than he remembered. A memory of metal stairs pressing into his back and wind screaming around his ears whispered through his mind and he tugged at the cuffs again, eyes wide.

With Darth Vader looming over them all like a distinctly murderous monolith, it was not especially surprising that no one spoke for a few seconds.

Even less surprising was the fact that Lieutenant Forien was the first to speak, almost sneering with overconfidence.

“My lord, we believe the prisoner has further knowledge of the-” his words cut off abruptly with a gagging sound. Every man there knew what that meant. Most turned their faces away.

“Officer,” Vader turned to Brask with a deceptively casual voice, “Did Skywalker attempt to escape?”

Brask stood ramrod straight, eyes focused on some point just past Vader’s shoulder. “No, milord. He did not.”

“And have the remaining two members of the doomed expedition already been located?”

Forien continued to gasp and claw at his throat as Brask hemmed and hawed and shook his head. “No, milord,” he gulped. “The lieutenant believed Commander Skywalker was the more immediate threat.”

The remote for the magbinders flew from Forien’s slack grip to land in Vader’s glove. He glanced at it, then crushed the device in his fist just as the lieutenant dropped with a faint cracking sound. Luke jerked back as the body fell inches from him, and realized that the cuffs were no longer magnetized to the floor.

Vader was still angry, and Luke wasn’t sure where that anger would be directed next. He remained on the floor, hoping to present a smaller target, just in case.

“Officer,” Vader turned back to Brask as though nothing had happened, still deadly calm, “I trust you are capable of locating the expedition members without further...complications?” When the man answered with a barely audible affirmative, he nodded and waved to seven troopers and the officer. “Dismissed.”

Clearly shaken, the designated stormtroopers hastily followed Brask out of the alcove, leaving Luke alone with Vader and nine other soldiers once more. There was a tense silence between them for a moment, but then Vader held out a hand. Echoes of Cloud City washed through Luke’s mind for a moment. Tentatively, chest still tight with pain and the overall fear of the entire situation, Luke reached up and took the proffered hand. With a swift tug, he was hauled to his feet. The motion jarred his ribs and he gritted his teeth.

“Is it broken?” Vader demanded.

“Don’t know,” Luke gasped, “Gonna have some interesting bruises though. Beat that , Hobbie!” Then, realizing that Rogue Squadron and its coping mechanisms of the Worst Ways to Die list and the Most Creative Bruise Patterns list would mean nothing to Vader, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Friend of mine. Always one-ups me with injuries.”

His father stared at him, silent save for the mechanical breathing, and Luke could have sworn he caught an impression of -can’t leave him alone for ten minutes-

It was so remarkably like something Owen had said (on multiple occasions) that he couldn’t help but chuckle. Which jarred his ribs again.

With something like a disgusted growl, Vader caught the boy’s wrists and pried the deactivated magbinders off. He stubbornly ignored the way Luke’s shoulders slumped in relief when they hit the floor, pushing away a faint memory of something Sergeant Kreel had said years ago, and turned to the remaining stormtroopers in the area.

“Commander Skywalker is under my protection,” he rumbled. He turned Luke to face the soldiers, keeping his hands on his shoulders in a blatantly possessive display. “Any further hostility against him will be dealt with accordingly.”

Under the protection of a Sith. Luke wondered if he had exchanged the monsters in the basem*nt for the brooding rage of a dragon.

Chapter 23: Bonus Features: Deleted Scene 2, "Alternate Epilogue"

Chapter Text

Admiral Piett had not worked with clones before. Or Mandalorians. He wasn't sure which these men were. Both, potentially. So when Lord Vader had summoned him to the planet's surface to meet the twenty-odd men in armor, he really hadn't the slightest idea of what to expect.

The nearest man, only distinguishable from his companions by the yellow accents on his armor, had all but swaggered forward to look him over.
"A bit skinny," he'd growled, "But I've seen worse. Hey pipsqueak, what's your background? Who were you with in the last war?"

That had caught Piett off-the-record somewhat, and he'd floundered for an answer before replying, "I never served in the GAR proper. I was part of the local Axxilan fleet. Anti-piracy division."

The clone had narrowed his eyes, then nodded. "Good answer. Welcome aboard, pipsqueak."

After that, they'd largely ignored him until Lord Vader brought Skywalker into the room. They were considerably warmer in their reception to the Rebel.

"I told you, my son. This is only the beginning," said Vader.
Abruptly, Piett's last shreds of normalcy fled shrieking into the night.

Son?!

Well. That...that would certainly explain some of the urgency with which Vader had been hunting Skywalker all this time. The second-in-command of the Empire couldn't exactly let word get out that his own child had joined the opposition, now could he? But the idea of Darth Vader being anyone's father was so foreign to Piett that he couldn't quite grasp what he had just heard.

The clone who had judged him worthwhile glanced over and snorted at his dumbfounded expression. "You didn't know? Kriff's sake, that's General Bloody Skywalker. Where'd you think the kid got his name?"

Luke tipped his head back to look at Vader. "You served with them in the Clone Wars?"

Vader nodded. "Commander Cody of the 212th, retired. That's Jesse, Kix, Hardcase, and Klik." He turned and gestured to the other men, in the more civilian armor. "Those are Drop, Nix, Kor, Hisser, and Ricochet."

"I go by Ric these days, General," Ricochet interrupted. "Ric O'Sev."

Luke's eyes lit up. "Drop? Nix? Ricochet? You mean, from the-?"

"The Kiva mission, yes." Vader locked the door behind them. "They have been briefed."

Drop shifted. "Didn't expect anyone else to know about the...the Thing."
He reached out to shake Luke's hand. "Kriff, but you ain't much bigger than mine."

One of the two armored men standing behind Drop crossed his arms almost petulantly. "Oh, thanks a lot, Buir."

Drop ignored his protest. "General, these're my boys. Milo, Tyto, you greet the general proper, like I taught ya."

The two young men, probably Wes's age if Luke were to guess, stood to attention and saluted smartly.
"Yessir!"

The clone who seemed to be the leader gestured roughly to the rest of the armored soldiers. "Everyone here is either a Brother or their kin. No ISB flags, no outside loyalties."

"Good." Vader folded his arms. "Commander, you and the Admiral will follow me. There are battles to plan."

Luke frowned. "Battles?"

Commander Cody narrowed his eyes. "There's a Sith on the throne, kid. He sent my little brothers to die by the thousands for kicks and giggles. Your dad don't want him near you, and I don't want him near my brothers. That takes work. You think you win a planet overnight?"

Luke's eyes widened. He pivoted on his heel to stare up at Vader in shock.
"You...you decided not to...but I thought we didn't have much time before you were supposed to take me to him!"

"We do not," Vader responded in a growl. "That is why we must move quickly."

Vader gestured to Kix. "Put the boy through the same training you would expect of your brothers. See to it that his reflexes are still at peak condition despite his recovery."

Kix chuckled. "You free up that dojo of yours, and I'll put the kids through their paces."

Vader clamped a firm hand over the top of Luke's head and tilted it back so they were making eye contact. It was a bizarre gesture, but an affectionate one.

"You will show Kix the same respect you would show a superior officer in your own navy, is that understood?"

It was difficult to nod in that position, but Luke managed somehow.
"Of course, Father," he said with confidence.

Vader released him and stepped back. There was a touch of humor in his voice when he announced, "Gentlemen, I leave him in your capable hands."

Kix cracked his neck and took off his helmet to grin warmly at Luke.
"Great. Let's get started."